On Translator’s Adaptation And Selection Within Eco-translatology

The Happy Prince and Other Tales is Oscar Wilde’s representative fairy tales which have been treated as the valuable treasure for fairy tales. His writing style is idyllic and picturesque which has a far-reaching influence on us. The fairy tales include nine stories: The Happy Prince and Other Tales, The Nightingale and The Rose, The Selfish Giant, The Devoted Friend, The Remarkable Rocket, The Young King, The Birthday of The Infant, The Fisherman and His Soul and The Star-Child. All of the fairy tales have beautiful language and fascinating plot, which almost reached to be perfect. The readers could easily feel the truth, the beauty and the kindness and learn some philosophy and wisdom in the tales.In the past centuries, studies about translation essence, criteria and methods have taken a dominant role, but the study of translator has not been paid enough attention.There had been no exception to the translation study on Oscar Wilde’s works.Until the 1970 s, with the emergence of “cultural turn”, translation studies on translators became more and more prevalent. The current studies of The Happy Prince and Other Tales are mostly conducted from the perspective of translation principle, translation strategies,translation methods and so on. Few studies are done from the perspective of the translator.In recent years, with reference to Darwin’s theory of natural selection, Professor Hu Gengshen proposed the theory of translation as adaptation and selection which borrows the fundamental principle of “survival of the fittest”. Thus, he redefined translation as “a selection activity of the translator’s adaptation to fit the translational eco-environment”, which puts emphasis on the process and effect of translation and offers a new angle for further translation study.Based on the studies of Oscar Wilde’s literary work from home and abroad, this thesis attempts to make a thorough analysis on Ba Jin’s English translation of The Happy Prince and Other Tales within the framework of Professor Hu’s theory of translation as adaptation and selection, with the purpose of exploring what kind of adaptation and selection Ba Jin has made and why he did not make some certain adaptations and selections.Study has shown that Ba Jin has adapted to the needs of survival, personal interest, sensesof achievement and so on. In addition to the adaptations, he has made decisions and selections from the linguistic, cultural and communicative level. Linguistic dimension mainly lies in translation of lexical and syntactic level including four-characters, interjections and sentence sequence. Cultural dimension is manifested mainly in social culture, religious culture, linguistic culture and so on.Last, communicative dimension is reflected in the adjustment of sentence structure or sequence of the original text to achieveeffective communication. In fact, the three-dimensional transformation is relative, dynamic and interwoven with each other. In the process of adaptation and the process of selection, Ba Jin has employed various translation methods instead of being stuck by a certain translation method without flexibility, which not only presents the prominent position and the subjectivity of the translator, but also proves his excellent translation ability.