A Study Of Adaption In The Translation Of Tiantang Suantai Zhi Ge From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

As one of the representatives of "local literature", Mo Yan’s novels are featured with Chinese cultural elements in terms of both the content and the language using, especially those of China rural areas. To foreign readers, Chinese literature works are windows to acquaint themselves with China but the abundant exotic elements are compromising the readability of the works. Thus in translation of such literature works, reader’s feeling and acceptance of the translated text should be paid attention to.The translator of The Garlic Ballads, Goldblatt, has translated tens of Chinese literatures and is known for his freestyle translation that does not strictly correspond with the original text. He believe that "the writer writes for Chinese and he translates for the foreigners; translation is a process of rewriting", which reflects his translation ideology of focusing on the target readers’feelings. Comparing the original text with the translation, large amounts of adaption can be found in The Garlic Ballads, which is the object of this research in order to explore a pattern of the adaptions out of the examples.Adaptation theory was raised by Jef Verschueren in 1987. Pragmatics theory as it is, due to its common points with translation in its discussion on the adaptability in choices of words, many scholars have brought it into translation study and analyses. This thesis attempts to find cases of adaption and analyze the examples from the perspective of adaptation theory and its frame to find out how the translator achieves the goal by making adaptions to the target readers.The obtained result of this thesis is that Goldblatt’s strategies of adaption have managed to accord with the reading habits and cultural philosophies of the target readers as well as preserving the elements of the original text. The adaption pattern includes four objects:the original text, the translator, the translation and the target readers, in which the role of the key link-the translator, shifts in the whole process. As the role of the translator shifts, it can be found that in the concluded pattern, the main aspect of adaptation theory applied to explain translation also changes.Translation is a process of choices of words with attention should be paid to the dynamics and adaptabilities of language in order to avoid "dead translation" and to maximize the acceptability of the translation to the target readers.