Study On The Chinese Translated Version In Silent Spring From The Perspective Of Eco-translatology Theory

In the filed of translation studies, translators and scholars tend to use the achievements of other disciplines for reference. To be more specific, they examine the translation studies in an interdisciplinary perspective. After going through the linguistic turn and the cultural turn successively, the translation studies are undergoing another turn-the ecological turn. In 2001, Professor Hu Gengshen first put forward the notion of eco-translatology, broadening the vision of interdisciplinary studies on translation. With "an approach to translation as adaptation and selection" as the fundamental theory, eco-transaltology has now become an interdisciplinary research, studying translation from the perspective of ecology.This thesis makes a tentative study on the translation of Silent Spring by Lv Ruilan and Li Changsheng based on Hu Gengshen’s Eco-translatology. Rachel Carson was a famous American ecologist. Silent Spring was her classical masterpiece in ecological literature. She advocated stopping the abuse of pesticide through her novel Silent Spring. More important, she successfully drew the public attention to the relationship between human and nature, made them realize that human being is one of the common members of nature. Humanity should respect all lives. Regardless of plants, animals, mountains and rivers, they have the right to survive, and they all have their own intrinsic and inherent values, which will not be changed by the desire of human beings. People will understand and respect nature better by examining the earth in such a view.Through categorizations and analyses of terms such as "eco-translatology", "translational eco-environment", "selective adaptation" and "adaptive selection", this thesis proved the applicability of eco-translatology to the analysis of the Chinese version Silent Spring. Then the thesis analyzed the translated version from the aspects of translators’ internal adaptation, translator’s external adaptation to the translational eco-environment and the evaluation on translator’s translation version of Silent Spring, so as to provide a brand new perspective to understand Silent Spring. It was found that the Silent Spring was the production of Lv Ruilan and Li Changsheng’s active adaptation to their "translational eco-environment". The translators made selective adaptation on the linguistic dimension, cultural dimension and communicative dimension, thus producing a version acceptable by Chinese readers. The Chinese version of Silent Spring in this thesis is published by Shanghai Translation Publishing House.The whole thesis is divided into six chapters.First part is the introduction part, the author first make a general introduction of many different kinds of academic researches based on the theory of Eco-translatology. It mainly introduces the research situation of Eco-translatology both abroad and in China; the research purpose; the research method and the structure of the whole thesis.The next four following chapters are the main body and the conclusion of this thesis. The first chapter is the introduction of Silent Spring. This chapter states the background of Rachel Carson and the content of the novel. Meanwhile, this chapter summarizes the language features of the source and target text and the original intention and process of the translation Silent Spring.Chapter two states the definition of the translating theory--Eco-translatology adopted in this thesis. This thesis points out the illusion of the translational eco-environment, the adaptation and selection of translator, translational principle and translator’s multi-dimensional methods.Chapter three using the translator’s multi-dimensional selective adaptation to translational eco-environment in translating Silent Spring to make a detail analysis of the translated version of this novel.The fourth chapter illustrates the translators’ strategies on the linguistic dimension, cultural dimension and communicative dimension to achieve the final translation work. This chapter can be divided into three parts, a lot of examples will be provided from the original text and target text in order to make the comparison from every standard. From these we can see how the Eco-translatology analysis instructs the translation activities of the translators.Last chapter is the conclusion part; it makes a final conclusion to the whole thesis, and makes a further statement of the research limitations and research potentials of the translation oriented text analysis.Of course, one more thing necessary to be pointed out is that Hu’s still remains controversial among the scholars. The author of this thesis is not entitled to make comments, however, in view of the academic contending, trying to explain how Eco-translatology was applied in Silent Spring whose Chinese version was translated by Lv Ruilan and Li Changsheng. Meanwhile, this thesis is eager to arouse the eco-consciousness of environmental protection and protection ecological equilibrium.