Translation In Times Of Environmental Crisis

The environmental crisis has become an issue of people’s values and beliefs.The Environmental Humanities that integrate various humanities research have thus been gaining popularity.As a crucial perspective into cross-cultural and interlinguistic phenomena,translation is expected to play a role in this endeavor.Many scholars have made laudable explorations.Nevertheless,some problems do exist;the central problem is that the current studies systematically fail to match the crisis.Efforts are needed to understand and appreciate different human cultures,non-human life,and other disciplines;however,studies have been focusing on a small aspect of the problem.Besides,the writings considered to be translations by their writers,the interlinguistic and intermodal translations of environmental cultures,and the communication of crisis-related scientific knowledge are all important research topics for scholars of translation.The research questions for this dissertation are then as follows: If there exists a more fundamental new theory of translation? If so,how will this new theory be developed? Will this theory help understand and explain the problems in the environmental crisis?By adopting an interdisciplinary perspective,this dissertation starts from the fundamental concept of information and through which new understandings are achieved regarding the key concepts like source texts,target texts,translators,and meaning in the traditional model of translation.Finally,the Information Theory of Translation(ITT)is proposed.It expands the concept of translation and reveals translation to be a meaning-making process by all the human and non-human life and other material agents based on their computation mechanisms.As a result,ITT is able to reveal that writing and the traditional concept of translation are the same processes from a more fundamental perspective and provides ways to understand authors like Temple Grandin,Les Murray,and Jody Gladding,who integrate translation into their creative processes.ITT also sheds further light on the relationship between translation and culture where cultural translation is more than an interlinguistic,meaningtransferring activity across cultures but a multi-dimensional and multi-modal meaning-making process.Therefore,we are able to expand the object of study in discussing the translations of environmental cultures;for instance,the English translation and movie adaptation of Wolf Totem may be different in form but are interconnected acts of translation.ITT advocates the idea that translation is more than a metaphor in scientific communication;it shows that translation plays a substantial role in the production of scientific knowledge and the communication to the wider public.The communication of climate change related scientific knowledge is no longer a definite or objective act;it is better to be understood as a unique meaningmaking process by various agents.The information-based theory of translation has proved to be fruitful in explaining and analyzing the systematic and complex phenomena in the environmental crisis.Against the backdrop of an endangered world,the Information Theory of Translation will undoubtedly facilitate the development of Translation Studies and the further integration between Translation Studies and the Environmental Humanities.ITT can provide explanations to key concepts and phenomena like translation unit,the quality of translation and self-translation.It will also continue to expand the studies between translation and the environment in areas of non-human life,human cultures and the science.