An Analysis Of Zhang Zhenyu’s Translation Of Moment In Peking From The Perspective Of Translation As Adaptation And Selection

In inter-lingual translations, there is the situation in which the writer whose mother tongue is A writes in the language of B. and then what he writes is translated back into language A by him or another translator. Zhang Zhenyu’s translating of Lin Yutang’s Moment in Peking is a case in point. Although Lin’s intended choice of translator is his friend Yu Dafu. the translator Zhang still finished his Chinese version of this novel and this version has been in wide circulation. Sadly, most of the researches on this version were carried out from the perspective of faithfulness, ignoring the efforts made by the translator.It is an established fact that no translation can take place without the participation of the translators and they can have a huge influence on the production of the translational product. And that’s why in recently years, more and more importance has been attached on the translators’ subjectivity. However, no consensus as to who is the subject of translation has been reached yet. With an attempt to emphasize the central role of translators. Professor Hu Gengshen has came up with the approach of translation as adaptation and selection which states clearly that the process of translation is actually the adaptation and selection of translators to the translational environment. A comparative study of the SL text and TL text has been carried out under the framework of translation as adaptation and selection to find out why did the translator Zhang choose to translate Moment in Peking and what adaptations and selections had been made by him.Through a tentative study, the author of this thesis has found out that the SL text of this case study is unique because there are some misused phrases and chinglish in the SL text. And the quotations of Chinese scripts. proverbs and detailed explanation in English for western readers are also the characteristics of Moment in Peking. Besides that, the author’s requirements that the translator should be familiar with Peking dialect and those translators whose translated texts sound Europeanized should not even try their hands at his book, as well as the difficulty for the author to express some Chinese thoughts in English are all factors which need to be taken into account by the translator. Therefore, in the pre-translating phase, Zhang had adapted well to his excellent bilingual competence, his appreciation of Lin’s works and the lack of a satisfying Chinese version to make the decision of translating this novel. In the while-translating phase, the translator had added "er" to many words and substituted several words with Peking dialects to meet the author’s demand. On top of that, the adoption of the translation strategy of domestication and translations methods such as addition, deletion, revision, restoration and rewriting are evidences of his adaptive selections in the producing of the TL text. What’s more, four types of mistakes made by the translator have been briefly summed up for an objective evaluation of Zhang’s work.To conclude, the translators" translation activities are closely related to all the factors in the translational environment. On the one hand, the efforts made by the translators should be recognized and on the other hand, if the translator wants his translational product to stand the test of time, he has to make appropriate adaptations and selections.