A Study On E-C Translation From The Perspective Of Theory Of Adaptation

Verschueren’s Theory of Adaptation is a general pragmatic perspective to explain language use from the aspects of cognition, society, culture and so on. The theory argues that for language-internal or language-external reasons, language use is a ceaseless process of making choices to achieve the communicative purposes. Translation is a process of making linguistic choices, in which translators turn the source text into the target text. It can be interpreted as a special two-way language communication and adaptation process. Thus, it is necessary to study translation from the perspective of Theory of Adaptation.Vernon God Little, which has won the Booker Prize in 2003, has drawn its materials from American campus shootings. Since its publication, it has been spoken highly of and meanwhile scholars home and abroad have conducted extensive researches on it. At present,the current researches on Vernon God Little are mainly restricted to the perspective of its literature meanings and limited to the translation perspective. This thesis analyzes Vernon God Little and its Chinese version from the perspective of Theory of Adaptation. Through analyzing the specific examples from the following four aspects: linguistic adaptation,extra-linguistic adaptation, dynamics of adaptability and salience of the adaptation process,this thesis makes a thorough inquiry into the question how translators make appropriate linguistic choices to achieve the pragmatic equivalence of translation. At the same time, this thesis proves the significance and necessity of making choices and adaptations in translation process.The results of the study shows that choices and adaptations would be made both on linguistic level and on extra-linguistic level. On linguistic level, adaptations may occur on levels such as phonetic level, lexical level and syntactic level; On extra-linguistic level,adaptations should be made at three levels basically, namely, adaptation to the mental world,adaptation to the social world, and adaptation to the physical world; dynamics of adaptability is presented by the constant choice-making and adaptations influenced by both contextual correlate and linguistic structural objects; in translation process, both translation purposes and target readers’ response have a marked impact on translators’ salience of the adaptation process.Studying translation from the perspective of Theory of Adaptation can help language learners fully comprehend the process of translation. The thesis sustains the prominence and instructive significance of applying Theory of Adaptation to the domain of literature translation, and it also shows certain value for reference on the further study in this domain.