Translator’s Adaptation And Selection-a Study On C-E Translation Of Publicity Materials About Fujian’s Intangible Cultural Heritages

Ever since the cultural turn in translation studies, increasing public and academic interest has been attached to one of the most prominent factors in the translation activity-translator. As both the reader of the source text and the author of the target text, translators are always responsible for bonding together the original author and target readers and even channeling two different cultures. Nonetheless, studies on the central position and leading role of the translator are yet to be deepened and systematized. In light of this, Chinese scholar Hu Gengshen, drawing on Darwin’s theory of "natural selection" and "the survival of the fittest", carried out a systematic investigation on translator’s adaptive selection and selective adaptation during the translating process. Thereafter, the approach to translation as adaptation and selection was broached and well developed by Hu, paving the way for deeper researches into translators’subjectivity.Nowadays, with the development of China’s economy and its upgraded global influence, Chinese to English translation of various foreign-oriented publicity materials is much needed and highly demanded. Since the2001’s proclamation of China’s kunqu opera as one of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO, China, with its abundant and plentiful intangible cultural heritages, has become a country with the world’s largest number of world-ranking intangible cultural heritages. Nonetheless, as a special field of foreign-oriented publicity, Chinese-English translation of ICH publicity materials has not yet received enough attention it deserves, whilst most of the relevant previous studies merely focused on translation strategies and techniques, or centered around the extant translation difficulties, deficiency and the overall translation quality etc, ignoring the role of translators as well as various factors that affect their choice-making during the translating process.The present study therefore attempts to explore translators’adaptation and selection in the process of translating ICH publicity texts from Chinese to English from the perspective of the approach to translation as adaptation and selection which defines translation as "a translator’s adaptation and selection activities in a translational Eco-environment" which refers to "the worlds of the source text and the source/target languages, comprising the linguistic, communicative, cultural and social aspects of translating, as well as the author, the client, and the readers"(Hu Gengshen,2004:220). The translational Eco-environment is the amalgamation of a set of factors that restrict translators’most adequate adaptation and optimal selection. The approach attaches much importance to translators’central position and leading role in the translation activity, proposing that translators must be able to make adaptive selections from linguistic, cultural, communicative and some other dimensions in accordance with the translation principle of "multi-dimensional adaptation and adaptive selection" so that both the translator and the translated text can survive ultimately.Similarly, when translating ICH publicity materials from Chinese to English, translators should adapt to the unique translational Eco-environment of foreign-oriented publicity and undertake a series of choice makings so as to meet the publicity demands and realize the "stepping out" of Chinese culture in the true sense. Thus, under the guidance of the approach, the present study tries to integrate into a unified framework what factors translators should adapt to as well as how they ought to make selections from multiple dimensions when translating ICH publicity materials from Chinese to English, in the hope of expanding and deepening studies on Chinese-English translation of ICH publicity materials.The present thesis firstly offers a brief review of previous researches on this particular translation field, and then an overview of the approach is presented, based on which the study embarks on a qualitative analysis of first-hand bilingual (Chinese and English) introductions about intangible cultural heritages in Fujian. Most of the examples presented are extracted from the Directory of Intangible Cultural Heritages in Fujian, which is the first bilingual edition of its kind in China, whilst some are ICH-related introductions displayed on the billboards in the Three Lanes and Seven Alleys in Fuzhou, some from China’s Intangible Cultural Heritage (2011) and some from the websites.The present study concludes that when translating ICH publicity materials from Chinese to English, translators on the one hand need to adapt to needs, competence and the unique translational Eco-environment of foreign-oriented publicity in the stage of adaptation; and on the other hand, appropriate translation strategies should be made by coordinating the communicative, linguistic, and cultural dimensions so as to produce the best translated text and survive for long.So far, researches on Chinese-English translation of publicity materials have drawn more and more focus from the academic circle, yet studies on this very field are still deficient and far from satisfactory. It is therefore hoped that the present research on translator’s adaptation and selection might help shed a new light on this particular field of translation study and offer a new perspective for future translation practices regarding intangible cultural heritages.