A Comparative Study Of Two Chinese Versions Of Vanity Fair From The Perspective Of Translation As Adaptation And Selection

Vanity Fair, the master piece of William Makepeace Thackeray, a critical realismwork, bombed the English literature when it was first published and won him the nameof "the19th cent’urys Fielding of England". As a great critical realism work, VanityFair was known as its language rich with satire and irony. The author used few wordsto convey profound meanings and rich emotions. The first complete Chinese version ofVanity Fair was translated by Lady Yang Bi in1957. She translated it into MingliChang and soon became a well-known English novel to Chinese readers; after abouthalf a century, Peng Changjiang’s version Mingli Chang, also named Xuhuan Jishi, waspublished in1996. With the development of economy and the prosperous of culture,more than10Chinese versions of Vanity Fair appeared. Compared with these versions,Lady Yang Bi’s and Peng Changjiang’s versions have stood out for their uniquesignificant and charm, thus cannot be overlooked. Lady Yang Bi’s version is the firstcomplete Chinese version and also the only complete one until1980，while PengChangjiang’s version is the first one after China’s Reform and Opening-up. In view ofthis these two versions were selected as the subject of the study.In China, it has always been a general interest to study the translation of VanityFair in the field of translation studies. However, these studies and researches aremainly rfom the aspect of translation strategies, linguistic and cultural, this thesis isthe only one studies Vanity Fair rfom the Approach to Translation as Adaptation andSelection. This thesis compared and analyzed the two influential Chinese versions ofV’anity Fair in China based on Professor Hu Gengshens theory—An Approach toTranslation as Adaptation and Selection. In the light of the concept of "Translation asAdaptation and Selection", this thesis first compared the differences the two translatorsmade in their adaptive selections rfom linguistic dimension, cultural dimension andcommunicative dimension. Then the thesis analyzed elements in translationaleco-environment that affected the two translators’ adaptive selections, including thesource text，dominant ideology of the two translators, target language and targetreaders, as well as translation motivation of the two translators.The study found that these two versions, both reflected the main characteristic oftheir times, are the productions of the two translators’ adaptation to their translationaleco-environment. In translating Vanity Fair, Yang Bi selected lexical and syntacticforms to adapt to her translational eco-environment. In dealing with foreign cultures, she replaced some foreign cultural concepts with Chinese ones and made a greatnumber of annotations. The translational eco-environment is totally different with thatof Yang Bi’s. He retranslated Vanity Fair by selecting lexical and syntactic forms thatadapt to the reading needs of modern readers. Instead of replacing foreign culturalconcepts with foreign ones, he also made numbers of annotations to satisfy Chinesereaders’ needs of learning foreign cultures. The most distinctive difference of thesetwo Chinese versions lies in the communicative dimension. Compared with Yang Bi’sversion, Peng Changjiang’s fully adapted to and reproduced the source text andcommunicative intention of the source text writer.Through comparative analysis, this thesis concluded that apart rfom the influencesof different translational eco-environments of the two translators, the differences ofthese two Chinese versions of Vanity Fair were greatly affected by the two translators’emphasis on different dimensions in the process of adaptive transformation.