Translator’s Adaptation And Selection

Translation activity is as old as the appearance of the word. Since ancient times,quite a number of translation versions of religious works, technological documents andclassical literatures constitute into bright culture of human civilization, whichsymbolizes the social development and national communication. However, thetraditional translation studies had mainly taken a prescriptive model, focusing on thenature of translation, criteria for translation and translation techniques, but neglectingthe translation process and the systematic study of the translator, the most dynamicfactor involved. It is the “culture turn” in1970s that discovered the translator andbrought increasing attention to the studies of the translator. Hence strongly inspired bymodern ecological wave of “return to nature”, Professor Hu Gengshen combinedDarwin’s principle of “natural selection” with translation studies and put forward atranslator-centered translation model.Within Hu’s approach to translation as adaptation and selection, he definestranslation from translators’ perspective as “a translator’s adaptation and selection in atranslational eco-environment which refers to the worlds of the source text and thesource/target languages, comprising the linguistic, communicative, cultural and socialaspects of translating, as well as the author, the client and the readers”. All theadaptation and selection activities are conducted by the translator who occupies adominant and central position in the translation process. The translator’s adaptationand selection can be put into three aspects: needs, competence and translationaleco-environment according to Hu’s approach.This thesis attempts to analyze Wang Rongpei’s translation of The Peony Pavilionby applying Hu’s approach from the perspective of translator’s adaptation andselection to needs, competence and translational eco-environment. The main purposeis to prove that Wang’s choice of translating The Peony Pavilion and translationstrategies are due to his own adaptation and selection to needs, competence andtranslational eco-environment. The Peony Pavilion written by an eminent playwright Tang Xianzu in the Yuan Dynasty is a masterpiece in Chinese drama history andenjoys the same popularity as William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Therefore, theauthor chose to employ Hu’s approach to translation as adaptation and selection as hertheoretical framework by making a tentative study on Wang Rongpei’s translation ofThe Peony Pavilion to explain how he adapted himself into the translationaleco-environment and conducted three dimensional transformations, namely linguisticdimension, cultural dimension and communicative dimension for the production of thetarget text. Moreover, this thesis can also be regarded as a case study to prove thefeasibility and explanatory force of Hu’s approach.