Translator’s Adaptive Selection In C-E Prose Translation From Eco-translatological Perspective

At the beginning of 21 st century, professor Hu Gengshen first put forward Eco-translatology. With Eco-holism as core idea, the oriental Eco-wisdom of harm ony between nature and hum an as thought foundati on, Darwin’s adaptation and selection as theoretical basis, Eco-transl atology creatively com bines ecology and translation together, providing a m acro and system atic perspective for translation. Eco- translatology defines translation as a selective act ivity of translator’s adaptation to f it the trans lational Eco-environment(Hu, 2004:225) translator m akes adaptive selection of transform ations in linguistic, cultural and communicative dim ensions so as to m aintain and balance the linguistic, cultural and communicative Eco-environment between source language and target language. With more than ten years of boo ming development, numerous articles and academic dissertations on its theoretical studies and applied studies have proved extensive applicability and mighty explanatory power of Eco-translatology.As a kind of literary sty le comparable to poem, novel and drama, prose gained little attention from translators. Professor Zhang Peiji made a great con tribution to C-E prose translation through publishing four volumes of Selected Modern Chinese Essays. In addition, At present, the studies on C-E prose translation, especially modern Chinese essays translated by Zhang Peiji mainly focus on three points, such as translation methods and strategies, the aesthetics and styles, as well as the translator. All of these studies did make ef fects on prose translation, but lacked of a macro and comprehensive study on it. Therefore, the study of C-E prose translation is badly in need of being taken from a macro and overall angle.This thesis intends to study translator’s adaptive selection in C-E pose translation from Eco-translatological perspective, by taking a systematic and complete interpretation and analysis of Zhang Peiji’ s translating process for Selected Modern Chinese Essays as an example by using qualitative research m ethods. The study tries to respond that how the translator adapts to translational Eco-environment, in what level and aspects the translator makes adaptive selections and what translation m ethods he selects. The study shows that translator makes adaptive selection in three dim ensions and each dim ension includes different levels and aspects. Meanw hile, in order to make three dimensional transformation succeed, translator selects various translation m ethods in translating p rocess such as literal translation, free translation, amplification, free translation with footnote, transliteration with footnote and so on.It is found that Eco-translatology can be used to interpret and analyze translating process in C-E prose translation. First, it tries to prove the E co-translatological feasibility in C-E prose translation study through showing its explanatory power for analyzing translation process. Second, it intends to provide guida nce for C-E prose tran slation practice by analyzing and pointing out various translation methods of translator ’s adaptive selection. Thus, a new perspective can be explored in C-E prose translation study.