A Contrastive Study On Two English Versions Of Fu Sheng Liu Ji:A Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Fu Sheng Liu Ji is the autobiography of a writer Shen Fu, which is of high literary value. In1936, Lin Yutang’s translation made the book enter the English world, and in1960, Shirley M. Black, a British sinologist also translated the work, expanding the oversea popularity. At present, most of the studies shed light on microscopic levels, such as linguistic culture, translation strategy, and the translators’subjectivity. In addition, since Lin Yutang’s version has long been regarded as one of his best translation works, most of the studies concentrate on his version, but so far very few studies have been done between Lin’s version and the other one. Therefore, the thesis compares the two English versions under the Adaptation Theory, within which some meaningful explorations can be done.In1987, Jef Verschueren proposed the concept "adaptation" in pragmatics, and then the publishing of Understanding Pragmatics in1999helped develop and improve the concept and furthermore put forward a theory of "a perspective on pragmatics", of which the core concept is Adaptation Theory. He and Yu(何自然&于国栋,1999：428-435) considered it as "a pragmatic theory which has strong explanatory power, good application value and development prospect.1" The core of the theory is that language use is a dynamic process of adaptation. The four angles of language use are:contextual correlates of adaptability, structural objects of adaptability, dynamics of adaptability and salience of adaptation process. These four angles are in perfect agreement with the social, linguistic, cultural and cognitive factors in the process of language use, thus Adaptation Theory can be applied to study the special use of language-translation.The paper compares the two English versions under the Adaptation Theory and then provides some enlightenment to literary translation based on the contrastive analysis. Firstly, from the angle of contextual adaptation, foreignizing method can maintain the exoticness of the literary works to make readers experience the exotic beauty. As a preferred strategy, foreignization will undoubtedly lead the road to improve the level of literary translation. Secondly, the current structural adaptation acquires not merely the fluent conversion of the target language, but the reproduction of the author’s "communicative clues". Cognitive context of the target readers can be consistent with that of the original readers through communicative clues, to make the translation get the optimal relevance. Thirdly, the writer explores the degrees of salience of the versions from the angle of the translators. The reason is that the translator acts a leading role in translation, of which the degree of salience largely depends on that of the translator, while the translator’s degree of salience is influenced by his or her own position.This paper conducts a contrastive analysis on dynamic adaptation the two translators make in contextual correlates and structural objects under the different degrees of salience. The paper compares the two versions’ translation effects and translators’ degrees of salience to appraise the better translation handlings which can prove that most translation problems can get the satisfactory explanations. What’s more, some adaptative enlightenment to literary translation is also summarized to offer a new perspective on translation practice and good reference to the study of literary translation.