A Contrastive Study Of Two Chinese Versions Of Through The Looking-glass, And What Alice Found There From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

In his book Understanding Pragmatics, Belgian linguist Jef Verschueren firstly proposed adaptation theory, illustrating linguistic use from four aspects—contextual correlates of adaptability, structural objects of adaptability, dynamics of adaptability and salience of adaptation processes. He believes that in order to achieve communicative purposes, linguistic users make constant choices according to social contexts. Adaptation theory not only enriches the theoretical framework of pragmatics, but also offers a new angle for translation studies. Adaptation emphasizes the consistency between linguistic selection and communicative environment, objects and purposes. As a cross-cultural process of linguistic use, translation should also abide by the above rules.As a classic of children's literature, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There has representative significance and plays an important role for translation studies of children's literature. Adaptation theory suggests that a successful translation is made that the translator confirms translating purposes, selects translating strategies and makes adaptation, thus accomplishes communicative tasks and translating purposes. Through dynamic adaptation to the context and structural objects, Chao Yuanren makes full use of rhetorical devices such as puns, rhymes, onomatopoeias in his version. Discussing the relationship between translation activity and adaptation, this paper believes that adaptation theory has extensive applicability for children's literature translation.