On Idiom Translation Strategies From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory Based On Wang Yongnian's Translated Version Of Selected Short Stories Of O Henry

O Henry, celebrated American short-story writer in the early 20 th century and the founder of American contemporary short stories, is known as “Three Great Masters of Stories in the World” together with Maupassant of France and Chekhov of Russia. His stories,exquisite in conception and unique in style, reveal the life of the people from the middle and lower classes. And O Henry is renowned for his perfect use of puns and idioms, humorous languages and surprising endings. Idioms, involving ethical and regional features, contain abundant cultural messages, luxuriant culture backgrounds and characteristics. They are full of distinct images and analogies. With economic globalization developing rapidly, the communication and integration between the countries and the nations push forward. Under the circumstance, the study of E-to-C translation of idioms in O Henry's stories is favorable for the Chinese to learn about the western culture and is of great significance to promote the cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries. Idioms in Selected Short Stories of O Henry are rich in western cultures, such as history culture, food culture, religion culture,decorum culture and so on. These western cultures are fundamental to the widening of Chinese people's international scope and their understanding of western culture and history.Accordingly, idiom translation of a high quality is of great importance. Taking the idiom translation in Selected Short Stories of O Henry as the study object, this thesis mainly discusses the choices of translation strategies made by Wang Yongnian when translating the idioms in this work under the theory of adaptation, which can offer theoretical and practical guidance for translators to do cultural translation, especially the translation of the idioms containing rich cultural connotations in other literary works.The adaptation theory, established by Jef Verschueren, reveals that the usage of language is in essence a dynamic process of selecting and adapting. “The notion of adaptability will enable us to assign four clear tasks to pragmatic descriptions and explanations. These four‘tasks' or ‘angles of investigation', which do not constitute separable topics of investigation but which should be seen as focal points in one coherent pragmatic approach to language use,are as following: contextual correlates of adaptability, structural objects of adaptability,dynamics of adaptability and salience of adaptation processes ”(Jef Verschueren, 2000,p.65-66). Translating is a complicated process of language use. When employing translationstrategies, the translators, influenced by variable intralinguistic and extralinguistic ingredients,would make appropriate choices. So, translating is also a process of dynamic choosing in different aspects of language. Accordingly, the author holds the opinion that translation can be conducted from four angles of investigation, that is, contextual correlates of adaptability,structural objects of adaptability, dynamics of adaptability and salience of adaptation processes. Based on the author's detailed studies, it's found that Wang Yongnian mainly adopts three kinds of strategies when translating the English idioms in Selected Short Stories of O Henry into Chinese, namely, the strategy of foreignization, the strategy of domestication,and the compromised strategy of foreignization and annotation. Seen from the four angles of investigation of adaptation theory, the author draws the conclusion that Wang Yongnian makes choices of these three translation strategies mainly based on the following three rules:firstly, when translating the idioms with contextual correlates(the mental world, the social world and the physical world) and salience(mind in society, perception and representation planning) that the Chinese readers can comprehend and the discourse structures of which are similar to the Chinese idioms, he adopts the strategy of foreignization; secondly, when translating the idioms with contextual correlates and salience that the Chinese readers are familiar with and can completely understand, and the discourse structures of which are similar to Chinese ones, he adopts the strategy of domestication; thirdly, when translating the idioms with contextual correlates and salience that the Chinese readers cannot understand and the discourse structures of which are quite different from Chinese ones, he adopts the compromised strategy of foreignization and annotations. Meanwhile, the author holds the view that these three rules can also be adopted as the guidance for translators to solve the problem of adopting different translation strategies when doing cultural translation, especially the translation of the idioms containing rich cultural connotations in other literary works,which is where the contribution of this thesis lies in.