A Study On Two Chinese Translations Of The Good Earth From The Perspective Of Pragmatic Adaptation Theory

The Good Earth, which was published in1931, is the second novel ofPearl S. Buck. The novel greatly influenced the American world even the wholewestern world. It occupied the top of the best-seller list in1931and in1932. And TheGood Earth won the Pulitzer Prize in1932. Then it was turned into a Hollywoodmovie, causing a sensation. And it contributed to Pearl’s Nobel Prize in Literature in1938. The Good Earth belongs to China-theme foreign language literature. Theparticularity is that the language of country A is describing the culture of country Bin these works, making the dislocation between the signifier of language and thesignified of culture. The particularity of such works definitely results in theparticularity of translation. Domestic research circle has paid attention to thetranslation particularity of transnational literary works. Some researchers havedefined and studied this kind of translation from the perspectives of“back-translation”,“re-translation”,“culture back-translation”, etc.On the theoretical basis of Jef.Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory, with theexamples of Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth, one work of China-theme foreignlanguage literature, and its two translations (Da Di, translated by Hu Zhongchi andWang Fengzhen), this thesis starts from the discussion of the relationships betweenthe original and the Chinese culture to conform translation criticism practice oncommunicative context and language context. By comparing the original and the twotranslations, it aims to illustrate that adaptation criticism in the multi-dimensionalcontext can explain the language choices in the translation text done by the translator.The researcher investigates the shifts in the translation process of Chinese translatedversions and their regularity principles so as to reveal the influence that thedifferences between English and Chinese cultures in psychological structure,ideology, and aesthetic taste have on the translator’s language choices duringtranslation process. This thesis is hoped to make a strong explanation about thespecial phenomenon of China-theme foreign language literature translation andprovide some reference for it. Through the detailed analysis, we find that Pragmatic Adaptation Theory notonly can be used to testify the results of China-theme foreign language literaturetranslation, but focuses on the analysis of translation process and translation rules,which has the guiding significance to the translation criticism of China-theme foreignlanguage literature. Meanwhile, this theory can broaden the critical perspective,studying the appropriateness of language choices during the translation process andthe translator’s choice basis within the system (author--translator--reader).Thus,there is a dialectical evaluation about the translation results and the participation ofthe translator’s social consciousness, providing a research perspective for thedevelopment of the translation criticism of China-theme foreign language literature.In addition, the comparison and analysis of the original text and the two Chinesetranslations of The Good Earth show that: The translation criticism of China-themeforeign language literature should combine the local and the microcosmic languagecriticism with the whole and macro communicative context organically.The thesis is composed of three chapters. Chapter one is the literature reviewwhich includes the studies on Chinese translations of the China-theme foreignlanguage literature, the studies on the translations of The Good Earth and thetranslation studies from the angle of Adaptation Theory. Chapter two introduces thetheoretical framework of Pragmatic Adaptation Theory and the translation methodsrelated to the Adaptation Theory. Chapter Three focuses on a detailed contextanalysis of the source text and the target texts of The Good Earth from theperspective of Adaptation Theory. On the aspect of communicative context, theresearcher has studied the dynamic adaptation between the translation texts and thesource language on cultural context, social context and mental context. On the aspectof language structure, the researcher has studied the adaptation between thetranslation texts and the target language form on vocabulary, semantics, syntax, codestyle, textual cohesion and coherence, etc.