A Critical View Of The Approach To Translation As Adaptation And Selection

Translation studies have, for a long time, mainly focused on the nature of translation, criteria for translation and translation techniques, obscuring translation process and translator, the most dynamic factor involved in the process. Since the cultural turn in translation studies in the West after the 1970s, increasing attention has been paid to the translator as well as the subjectivity of the translator. Professor Hu Gengshen put forward a"translator-centered"translation model which puts translator's subjectivity to a top priority. Hu advocated the Approach to Translation as Adaptation and Selection, discussing translation"as a translator's adaptation and selection activities in a translational eco-environment". He holds that the process of translating is a production of target texts by"natural"selection by means of the translator's adaptation to the eco-environment and the translator's selection of the degree of the adaptation and decisions about the form of the final target text.As a newly-born discipline, academic studies have mostly focused on the introduction of the Approach to Translation as Adaptation and Selection as well as its contributions to translation studies. However, its theoretical limitations have received little attention. In light of this, the present thesis takes a critical attitude towards the approach to translation as adaptation and selection.In the first part of the thesis, it gives an account of the Approach to Translation as Adaptation and Selection. Chapter two analyzes the current limitations of the approach to translation, aiming at its theoretical props, translator-centeredness and criteria for the evaluation of translation. Chapter three puts forward some thoughts on how to improve the approach to translation.The discussions in this thesis aim to draw scholars'attention to the defects of the Approach to Translation as Adaptation and Selection and encourage them to come forward with more valuable research, thus pushing forward the further development of this newly-born theory.