On Fable Translation From Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

The present famous Aesop’s Fables, a collection of ancient Greek fable stories, is an achievement of various scholars through a long historical developing period. The first version of Aesop s Fables appeared in300BC with its source language being mainly Greek and Latin. Since that time, Aesop s Fables has been translated into English by many western scholars, and then different versions of Aesop’s Fables began to come into being. English versions of Aesop’s Fables in the west even have greater influence than that of its source-language versions. Chinese translation of Aesop’s Fables at first was based on the translated English versions. At present, the study of Aesop’s Fables is mainly directed from children’s literature and education aspects. So far, there is no comprehensive and systematic study carried out on Aesop s Fables from the perspective of an adaptation theory. This thesis will try to make a study on the translation of Aesop s Fables based on one Chinese version and one English version of Aesop s Fables from the perspective of adaptation theory.Verschueren, a Belgium pragmatic scholar, firstly put forward adaptation. Adaptation theory points out that the use of language is a process of constantly making choices and adaptation. Translation is a kind of verbal communication, so the translator makes a series of choices and adaptation from choosing the translation work to the final completion of his translation. As a result, adaptation theory has great influence on translation. From the perspective of adaptation theory, there are four researching angles or four dimensions to study translation:contextual correlates of adaptation, structural objects of adaptability, dynamics of adaptability, and salience of adaptation process. This thesis will study how the translator makes choices and adaptation in the process of translating Aesop’s Fables mainly from the four dimensions.This thesis mainly includes three parts:introduction, main body and conclusion. The introduction part introduces the research background, purpose, significance of this thesis. The body part is divided into four chapters:Chapter One reviews the development history and features of fable as well as fable translation studies and translation studies based on adaptation theory. Chapter Two is the theoretical framework, mainly introducing the theoretical origin and development of adaptation theory as well as its four research dimensions in adaptation research in the process of language use. Chapter Three introduces Aesop’s Fables and its author, and simply summarizes the translation history of Aesop’s Fables both at home and abroad and then introduces the finally-chosen English version and Chinese version that are analyzed in this thesis. Chapter Four is the main composition of this thesis. Based on the English version of Jones and the Chinese version of Xiao Mao, this chapter carries out analysis from the four researching dimensions of adaptation theory so as to prove the huge influence of adaptation theory in translation. The conclusion part concludes a summary of this thesis as well as the effect of adaptation theory in translation according to the analysis results of this thesis. Finally some suggestions on fable translation are put forward according to the result of this thesis.