Studies Of Lin Shu's Kuai Rou Yu Sheng Shu From Adaptation Theory

As the pioneer to bring foreign literary into China, Lin Shu's Lin Shu has made remarkable achievements in Chinese translation history. It is because he introduced a great many new thoughts, new literary theory and writing styles arousing from foreign literary works which had a profound influence on the upcoming writers that Chinese literary began to flourish. However, people's attitudes towards Lin Shu differ greatly for a long time. He is criticized because of his'unfaithful'translations, yet it is such'unfaithful'translations that are popular and well-received among the readers play a full role in the development of modern Chinese literature. Such kind of peculiar phenomenon is beyond the explanation capability of traditional translation theory. Regarding this, this paper will analyze the rationale and the necessity of Lin Shu's translations with Lin Shu's translation Kuai Rou Yu Sheng Shu as a study case by employing the adaptation theory.The general secretary of International Pragmatics Association Verschueren put forward adaptation theory in his book Understanding Pragmatics, exploring language use in a new perspective. The theory holds that using language consists of the continuous making of linguistic choices, consciously or unconsciously, and choices are made at every level of linguistic structures. Translation is considered as a process characterized with dynamic choice and adaptation by adaptation theory. Under the guidance of this theory, relevant discussions will be mainly carried out from the language-external aspect. By this means, many hot debates in translations will be easily solved.