A Study Of Michael Berry’s English Translation Of Huozhe From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Huozhe, which was published in 1992, is the most influential work written by Yu Hua, a representative writer of avant-grade literature. After the novel was translated into English by Michael Berry in 2003, it won much attention and popularity among English readers. After entering into 21 st century, with the deepening of the communication between western countries and China, more and more people began to research this novel. In recent years, many scholars have studied this novel from the perspectives of eco-translatology, ideology, the spread of literature and so on. However, very few studies were conducted on the translation of Huozhe from the perspective of Adaptation Theory. Therefore, this thesis studies the translation version of Huozhe from the perspective of Adaptation Theory. It expects to further testify the guidance of Adaptation Theory on the translation process.The Adaptation Theory, which is put forward by the Belgian scholar named Verschueren, is regarded as a pragmatic theory which has strong explanatory power. The core of this theory is that language use is a process of continually making dynamic adaptations. The translation process is also a process in which the translator continually makes dynamic adaptations to different factors with the aim to achieve the transfer of language and the transmission of cultural information. The thesis made a thorough study on the translation of Huozhe from the perspective of contextual adaptation under the framework of Adaptation Theory. It aims to study the factors Michael Berry takes into consideration when he makes contextual adaptation and the way Michael Berry achieves the transmission of cultural information.By adopting the qualitative method and analyzing the specific examples selected from the source text and the target text, it can be concluded that the translator Michael Berry takes the following factors into consideration:(1) the differences between the features of English and Chinese languages, for example the contrast of hypotaxis and parataxis;(2) target readers’ acceptability and their aesthetic taste;(3) different thinking patterns of Chinese and English readers. To deal with those differences, the translator consciously makes some adjustments in the aspect of the language structure, making it adapt to the linguistic custom and thinking patterns of the target readers. In order to reserve the style of the original text and achieve the transmission of the cultural information, the translator employs the literal translation method plus explanatory information. When the sentence is within the readers’ acceptability, it will be translated literally. However, when translating the culture-loaded words, the translator needs to supplement explanatory information with the aim to make the translation version be easily accepted by the target readers.This study further testifies the strong explanatory power of Adaptation Theory on literary translation. It tries to make significant exploration into the literary translation under the guidance of Adaptation Theory. Hopefully, it can promote the spreading of the excellent contemporary literary works.