A Study On Lin Yutang’s Translation From The Perspective Of Eco-translatology

Eco-translatology theory was first put forward by Professor Hu Gengshen of Tsinghua University in2001, which was based on the principle of Darwin’s Biological evolution theory. According to this theory, translation is defined from the translator’s perspective as this:"Translation is a selection activity of the translator’s adaptation to fit the translational Eco-environment." Scholars have done a lot to develop this system, Prof. Liu Aihua combines this theory with literary translator criticism and developed a five-step plan to evaluate literary translators.As an author-translator who is skilled in both English and Chinese, Lin Yutang enjoys great reputation both at home and abroad. His works are highly favored and praised by English readers, not to say his successful translation works in the western world. Since Lin spent more than thirty years in introducing Chinese culture to the western world, almost all his readers were westerners, he would inevitably come across these two questions:How to make his translations adapt to western cultural environment? How to make the exotic oriental culture accepted by westerners? These two questions must have been asked by himself for hundreds of times in his mind. These two questions are also the key questions in Eco-translatology, so this thesis tries to explore Lin Yutang’s translation from the perspective of Eco-translatology.This thesis adopts the five-step plan proposed by Liu Aihua. From macroscopic aspect, it makes an analysis of the influence of Eco-environment and translator central role reflected in Lin’s choice of source texts. In this part, It first introduces Lin’s life history and education background, then it divides his translation activities into three periods in terms of the content of the source texts, and analyzes the translational Eco-environment and translator’s subjectivity in three different periods, thus showing the influence of translational Eco-environment and translator-centeredness on the choice of source texts. From microscopic aspect, it takes The Importance of Understanding as an example to show how Lin chose the texts in The Importance of Understanding and how he adopts different translation strategies in linguistic, cultural and communicative dimension in translating so as to make his translations understood and accepted in western world.Through this discussion, the author proves the following two points:1, Lin Yutang’s choices of source text are influenced by translational Eco-environment in different life period and his own propensity for literature and culture;2, In the process of translation, Lin adopted different translation strategies to fit the translational Eco-environment and to preserve the essence of Chinese culture.