A Study On Four Chinese Versions Of Jennie Gerhardt From The Perspective Of Adaptation And Selection Approach

Traditional translation theories hold the view that the translator should be invisible. However, with the development of translation study, researchers pay more and more attention to translator subjectivity and the role of the translator. The translation theory adopted to guide the thesis is the approach to translation as adaptation and selection which is put forward by Professor Hu Gengshen. Its philosophic basis is Darwinian “natural selection” and “survival of the fittest” and it puts forward the view of translator-centeredness. In his opinion, translator is the center and the main part of the process of adaptation and selection. He or she is also the one who conducts and completes the process. This approach studies translation from the perspective of translator. It studies the influence of translator’s demands and abilities to the translation activity. “Translational eco-environment” is a new concept raised by the approach and it discusses the structure “ST-Translator-TT” which provides a broader perspective for transition study. It studies not only the equivalence between the ST and the TT but also other factors that influence translator’s adaptations and selections. Therefore, it enlarges the scope of translation study.This thesis studies four Chinese versions about the realism novel Jennie Gerhardt which is written by Theodore Dreiser. Four translators are Zhu Baoguang, Fu Donghua, Pan Qingling and Fan Wenmei who are all famous translators. They are skilled at translation activity. The reader’s feedbacks of their versions are better because their versions have been republished and reprinted many times. Four versions obtain their own characteristics. This thesis discusses the characteristics of different versions in detail from three-dimensional transformations perspective which includes linguistic dimension, cultural dimension and communicative dimension. During the process of analysis, the author adopted corpus tools to achieve related data and analyzed many collected examples. Therefore, this thesis is a combination of quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis and the conclusions achieved will be more scientific. In addition, reasons for the appearing of different characteristics will also be discussed systematically in the thesis from demands, ability levels and translational eco-environments perspectives.This thesis mainly discusses two questions. 1) What are the characteristics of each translated version formed by the translator’s specific adaptations and selections? 2) What are the reasons about the translators’ making different selections?The findings are as follows. Zhu Baoguang’s version was translated with literal translation method. The version is Europeanized. It introduces western culture properly. However, this version reflects dialect characteristics. Some parts were not correctly translated. Fu Donghua’s version is more fluent and standard than Zhu Baoguang’s version. His version is logical. It accepts domestication translation method and transforms cultural elements properly. The version is fluent and easy for readers to understand. Pan Qingling’s version is a little prolix. It contains a large quantity of words. The whole version is musical and elegant because it contains a lot of reduplicated words, exclamation and interjection words and idioms. Pan Qingling’s version reflects Chinese traditional culture. Some dialect characteristics appear in this version. In a word, his version is fluent, logical and vivid. Fan Wenmei’s version is precise and concise. Her expressions are varied and her version is more consistent with Chinese readers’ speech custom. Language of her version is simple, ordered, unadorned and understandable. She adopts suitable amount of idioms. Short sentences and suitable use of idioms are helpful for culture transforming. Her version is logical and formal. It also reflects women cogitation.Reasons of translators’ making different selections are mainly of three kinds. They are reasons about demands, translator ability and translational eco-environment. Demands part includes personal experience, translational dream, translation attitudes and so on. Translator ability part involves personal understanding about culture, the ST and other aspects. Translational eco-environment part is about the epoch and language development, dialect and gender influence, translational intention, national ideology, policy, publisher, readers and so on. These reasons influence translators’ making selections. Four translators’ situations will be discussed in detail. What’s more, the research also achieves some other conclusions. Translation as adaptation and selection approach studies translation from a broad and systematic perspective. Translator quality rises gradually with the development of the society. The ST and the TT can not be totally equal. These are also the findings of the research.With the guidance of the approach which studies translation from a new perspective, this thesis also adopts the research methods of quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis. Former studies did not pay much attention to this kind of study. They commonly did some researches about the literature value of novel Jennie Gerhardt. Therefore, quantitative and qualitative analyses about the translated versions are innovative for the study of the novel. The approach provides a theoretical framework for the research. The data achieved from the corpus tools improves the accurate degree of the research. New analysis method also provides a new thinking about the study of translation versions.