A Contrastive Study Of English Versions From The Perspective Of Translation As Adaptation And Selection

Tao Te Ching is a spiritual wealth shared by all the world and its transmission has a far-reaching effect on the improvement of world civilization. Meanwhile, English translation of Tao Te Ching deserves much of the credit. The Approach to Translation as Adaptation and Selection (ATAS) put forward by Hu Gengshen has been a hot research topic in translation field nowadays. Within the theoretical framework of the ATAS, by taking three English translations of Tao Te Ching for example, this study aims to make a contrastive study to investigate how the three translators make adaptation and selection in linguistic, cultural and communicative dimensions respectively on the basis of analyzing different methods adopted by translators to achieve their transformations and acquiring different features reflected in the three translations, and to verify that the translator's transformation is affected by their needs, competence and translational eco-environment. Specifically, this study centers on three research questions:(1) How do the three translators, Arthur Waley, Stephen Mitchell and Gu Zhengkun make their adaptation and selection in linguistic dimension? (2) How do the three translators make their adaptation and selection in cultural dimension? (3) How do the three translators make their adaptation and selection in communicative dimension?A monolingual comparable corpus in small scale which is composed of selected chapters by equidistant sampling method, that is Chapters 7,27,47,67 in three English translations of Tao Te Ching was constructed. Statistics of type/token ratio, lexical density, mean sentence length, the use of conjunctions were obtained for comparison and analysis. The major findings are as follows:firstly, in linguistic dimension, Waley chooses the prose style and uses the foreignization translation method to convey the content of source text. Mitchell simplifies his translation to make it the easiest to understand. Gu is not only the most faithful to the literary beauty, content and essence of the source text but also translates Tao Te Ching in a poetic style rather similar to the source language in sense, sound and form. Secondly, in cultural dimension, Waley brings Christian religion into his version. Mitchell employs the translation methods of domestication, free translation, simplification, modernization and westernization to make Chinese culture more acceptable to target readers. Additionally, he shows obvious inclination to Zen religion and feminist tendency in his translation. Gu adopts literal translation and foreignization translation methods to convey traditional Chinese culture accurately and make up for the cultural vacancy. Thirdly, in communicative dimension, three translators all adopt different strategies to preserve multi-themes and Lao Tzu's all-inclusive thoughts to make their versions popular and widely circulated in their times.This study proves the feasibility of the ATAS and broadens the scopes of its research. With the integration of both qualitative and quantitative analysis, this study could make such research on translator's multi-dimensional transformation more objective and systematic. Besides, it could provide some statistical data and samples as references for studies on translations of Chinese classics in the future.