Analysis Of Zhang Peiji’s Selected Modern Chinese Essays From Adaptation Theory

Prose, a widely used flexible literary genre with rich images, boasts a long historyand “free” in form while “focused” in spirit is its most important feature. Since theSpring and Autumn Period, prose has been a significant style to record thedevelopment of our Chinese history. The achievements in prose are equal to those ofthe poetry. However, poetry fell behind the prose after the May Fourth Movement in1919because people had dispute about the style of the poetry. Nonetheless, it isregrettable to notice the fact that the study on the prose translation, especially C-Eprose translation is backward and rare, and also previous studies on prose translationare lack of systematicness. Zhang Peiji’s Selected Modern Chinese Essays is regardedas the model text for translators and English learners in prose translation studies thusprovide a fresh view for the C-E prose translation and promote the prose translationstudies in the long run. The emergence of Adaptation Theory has casted a new light ontranslation field. According to the adaptation theory, language use is a process oflanguage choices and language has three properties, namely variability, negotiabilityand adaptability. The three properties make sure that language users can make variousappropriate choices and adaptability is the key notion.According to this, a qualitative analysis is adopted by the author on Zhang Peiji’sSelected Modern Chinese Essays with the adaptation theory. In the process oftranslating modern Chinese essays, different and proper translation methods areemployed dynamically and flexibly to meet the adaptation at various levels. Theanalysis of Zhang Peiji’s prose translation aims to help readers to understand thechoice making process and the translation skills in prose translation. It is hoped that asystematic study will be of help for the C-E prose translation in practice.