Ecolinguistic Approaches To The Translator’s Choice Of Words

Ecolinguistics views language from an ecological perspective and provides a new perspective for the study of language.Ecological discourse analysis is an important topic in the field of ecolinguistics.Alan Stibbe’s monograph shows that the ecosophy has an important impact on the results of discourse analysis.Regarding ecosophy and discourse analysis,Professor Huang Guowen puts forward harmonious discourse analysis,pointing out that “harmony in diversity is ecology”.Harmonious discourse analysis has three characteristics: nativeness,integrity and harmony.Eco-translatology and ecology of language have similarities.Eco-translatology mainly relies on the Approach of Translation as Adaptation and Selection to study translator’s adaptation and selection.The translator needs to adapt to the target language to achieve the harmonious relationship between the target text and the source text.The ultimate goal of harmonious discourse analysis is also harmony.Therefore,this thesis discusses translator’s choice of words to explore how to maintain a harmonious relationship between the target text and the source text.There are two research questions:1)What are the characteristics of harmony oriented translation? 2)How does the translator maintain a harmonious relationship between the target text and the source text through the choice of words?Qualitative analysis is adopted to study the translator’s choice of words from an ecological perspective,with the purpose of exploring the strategies to ensure harmonious reproduction of word meaning in the target text.There are the findings.First,there are two features of harmonious translation: integrity and nativeness.Integrity means that the TL should be coherent.The translator needs to have the consciousness of integrity to ensure that the target text has the same textual cohesive and coherent effect as the source text.Nativeness means that the target text conforms to the expression of the target language.It requires the translator to adapt to the target language when solving the problem caused by differences in vocabulary between English and Chinese so as to ensure that the TL is accurate,natural and fluent.Second,the translator should have a sense of harmony when choosing words.His determination of relations depends on the context and choice of words is based on relations among words.In this way,harmonious relationship between the target text and the source text can be achieved.As the implementer of translation activities,the translator’s cognitive activities have an important impact on his understanding of the source text and his expression.Beginners are often subject to the source text and the meaning given in dictionaries in the process of translation,ignore relations among words,and usually understand the meaning of the source text based on meaning given in dictionaries.This thesis explores the process and strategies of the choice of words from the aspect of harmonious translation,emphasizing that relations among words in the source text are the basis for achieving a harmonious translation.Relations among words in the target text and in the source text should be the same.Relations are important elements to ensure the integrity of the text.The interpretation of the relationship can raise the translator’s consciousness of harmony,integrity and nativeness.This thesis explores the translator’s choice of words and illustrates that the translator needs to adapt to the target language to deal with differences in lexical between English and Chinese when choosing word meaning in order to ensure that the semantic of the target text and the source text are shared,the target language is fluent and natural,and the textual effects are the same.