A Study Of Retranslation On Perspective Of Contextual Adaptability

Retranslation, as an important aspect of translation, has attracted more and more attention from translators and researchers both at home and abroad with the development of translation research. Studies about retranslation in the past, however, were confined to the specific conversion at linguistic level and comparison between different versions. They set faithfulness to the original text as an ultimate goal. If the original meaning can't be reached by translating one time or even several times, persistent retranslation is regarded as the best way to be approaching the unique meaning. In this utilitarian retranslation research, the original text is an immutable abstract entity which can transcend time and space and the translator's task is to explore this entity and express it in another language with extreme loyalty.Based on contextual adaptability in Jef. Verschueren's adaptation theory, this thesis will analyze and explain the retranslation phenomenon with descriptive translation approach. Context is divided into linguistic context and non-linguistic context in this thesis, which provides theoretical support for internal as well as external language research in retranslation studies. The descriptive translation paradigm's research object and starting point is the actual translation phenomena. It aims to find and represent all the decisions and choices made by translators during the process of translating through an objective description on the versions. The current study attempts to answer whether the phenomenon of retranslation is reasonable or a waste of time and energy, and why different translators adopt different translation strategies when translating the same original text. Is it creative to avoid the suspect of copy or are there any other reasons? This thesis considers that the previous progress-orientated retranslation concept has been focusing on the reversions'value. The incompletely faithful reversions are just like the rats scampering in the street. This kind of prescriptive approach to translation problems is bound to result in a gap between translation theory and practice, leading retranslation research into a dead end.This thesis holds that the previous traditional linguistic-oriented internal (conversion) research should be overturned. We should treat and regard retranslation phenomenon more comprehensively and objectively. The process of retranslating is a process for translator to adapt the context and adopt corresponding translation strategies and make different decisions. The original text and previous versions shouldn't impose too much limitation on the reversions. Actually, as long as the reversions are adapted to the original structure, the social and cultural background, ideology and the expectation of readers, they can be treated as reasonable existence and can be accepted by readers.In order to make this thesis more persuasive, two versions of the Confucian classic—The Analects are comparatively studied to show how the translators in different contexts made choices and adaptations to create the different style versions. These two equally influent reversions proves that retranslation is an adapting and selecting movement in the changeable context. For the context-corresponding reversions, we should not judge them as"good"or"bad"statically or one-sidedly.