A Comparative Study On Two English Versions Of Luotuo Xiangzi-from The Approach Of Dynamic Adaptation

Verschueren, the secretary general of IPrA (International Pragmatic Association), proposed a general perspective encompassing cognitive, social, and cultural elements to examine the linguistic phenomenon related to their usage in forms of behavior. The adaptation theory in light of the general perspective interprets pragmatics from a new approach, taking the use of language as a process of choice making and adaptation to context and linguistic structure with some degrees of salience. Translation, as a particular activity of cross-culture communication and language use, thus can be studied from the pragmatic adaptation approach.Based on the adaptation theory, the thesis makes a comparative study on the two English versions of Luotuo Xiangzi, namely Rickshaw Boy translated by Evan King and Camel Xiangzi translated by Shi Xiaojing. The author first tries to build up a translation model under adaptation theory to explain the translation process. Choice making and adaptation is found to run through the translation process, and the translator has to make continuous choices and adaptations in understanding the source text and reconstructing the target text, which determines the essentiality of dynamic adaptation in translation process. Further the key notion of adaptation theory—dynamics of adaptation is applied to examine how dynamic adaptation is realized in the two English versions of Luotuo Xiangzi from the following three aspects: temporal dimension, contextual correlates and linguistic structure. In view of the fact that the two versions were produced at different historical stage, the temporal dimension should take into consideration the particular historical, social, and cultural environment along with the specific readership and communicative ends. The contextual correlates are mainly concerned with external-linguistic elements, which include the adaptation to social world, mental world and physical world. The structural adaptation is focused on internal-linguistic elements, including adaptation occurs at choice of code and different layers of linguistic structure: sound, lexical, sentential and textual. The comparative analysis covers the differences in ending design, culture-loaded expressions, sex description, choice of translation methods such as abridging, amplification, to name a few, and then explains these differences according to the three aspects of the dynamics of adaptation, meanwhile providing a new meaningful understanding for translation studies to guide the practice.With the comparative analysis, the author puts forwards that translation by nature is a complicated activity involving continuous choice making, in which translator dynamically adapts to external-linguistic contexts and internal-linguistic structure with certain degrees of salience for certain desired purpose. Moreover, the necessity of retranslating literary text is pointed out, in other words, there is no"ultimate version"for the translation of a literary text. A literary text is supposed to be retranslated in adaptation to different time, context and communicative ends. Thus the comparative analysis does not merely stay at the linguistic level, the historical, social and cultural environment in a particular translating time is taken into consideration. Therefore, when applied to translation studies, adaptation theory is not only of great explanatory power but also provides a new perspective and deepens the translation studies.