On The Translation Of Texts On Classical Chinese Gardening-From The Perspective Of Verschueren's Adaptation Theory

The Chinese gardening,an integral part of traditional Chinese culture,has formed a distinctive style of its own over the centuries,occupying an important place in the world of gardening.Quality translations of texts on classical Chinese gardens can not only display the unique charms of Chinese gardening art,but also promote its fusion with the modern West landscape architecture.However,the task often seems formidable for the translator,because such texts often teem with quotations including poems and writings by ancients,who employed peculiar ways to interpret the theories of Chinese gardening.In order to obtain an overall picture of those texts and their translations,the present author first of all summarizes their distinctive features and examines sample translations.It is found that on the one hand those texts fall into the category of technical text,but on the other hand they possess of a delicate literary style.As a result,confronted with such a complex and unique text,the translator can easily become the victim of misinterpretation,over-translation or under-translation. Based on the distinctive features of texts on classical Chinese gardens,the author holds that the task of the translator is to provide the target reader with such kind of target text which not only conforms to the linguistic characteristics of the target language but also can be cognized by the target reader;thereby when the translator unfolds a piece of panoramic picture of classical Chinese garden in front of the target reader,he or she also revive interest from people in the world in appreciation and reappraisal of traditional garden craft.In view of the task of the translator,the author attempts to study the translation of texts on classical Chinese gardens from the perspective of Verschueren's Adaptation Theory,because the pragmatic theory has a strong power to interpret translation.Its power lies in its core concept and contextual correlates of adaptability.The core concept is adaptability.It is the property of language which enables human beings to make negotiable linguistic choices from a variable ranges of possibilities in such a way as to approach points of satisfaction for communicative needs.By the theory,the translation of texts on classical Chinese gardens is in essence a process in which the translator continuously makes linguistic choices to adapt to the communicative context and the linguistic context of the source text and the target text.Under the guidance of the theoretical framework deduced from the Adaptation Theory,the translation of texts is studied systematically.The process of application starts from adaptation to the communicative context whose ingredients include the physical world,the social world and the mental world.In these three processes of adaptation,it all relies on the translator to activate the original writer's and the target reader's "cognitive processes" so as to keep the communication going on smoothly.If the translator succeeds,he or she would make linguistic choices properly;otherwise the target text would not be cognized by the target reader.Moreover,the process of adaptation takes place at some levels of linguistic form:lexical,syntactic,discourse and rhetorical.The appropriate choice-making at these levels of linguistic form can result in the production of a target text which conforms to the linguistic characteristics of the target language,and thus the translator has a chance to be saved from the victim of misinterpretation,over translation or under-translation.The thesis concludes that in the process of translating texts on classical Chinese gardens under the guidance of the theoretical framework deduced from the Adaptation Theory,when the translator continuously makes linguistic choices to adapt to the communicative context and linguistic context of the source text and the target text,he or she is creating a quality translation and thus he or she is also approaching the point of fulfiling his or her task.