Research On Three Chinese Versions Of Essays From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Essays is Bacon's representative masterpiece.It has a wide range of contents;writing style is unique;many words and utterances are cited by people around the world.There have already been nearly 20 Chinese versions of Essays.However,the researches on the Chinese versions are all limited to Shui Tiantong's and Cao Minglun's versions,which objectively limits the thorough research on the translations of Essays.This research uses Jef Verschueren's Adaptation Theory as theory framework,Gao Jian's,Cao Minglun's and Pu Long's Chinese versions as research object to analyze and explain the three translators' language use.The three are all well-known translators,and their translations are widely accepted and appreciated by the society,which are frequently quoted by scholars.Compared with other Chinese versions,their language use is unique.Besides,translation strategies and methods are distinct from each other in the three translations.Conducting research on the three translations can give some enlightenments for those who will retranslate Essays and literary works.Though the three Chinese versions have good sales,Cao's version is the best seller,which also has been quoted most,and owns the most praise and appreciation from scholars.Based on the research analysis,the linguistic features exist on different levels.On these levels,there are both similarities and differences.To find out the reason,it can be analyzed and explained from the perspective of Adaptation Theory.Adaptation Theory analyzes and explains language use from the comprehensive perspective of cognition,society and culture,and linguistics.The language choice of the three translations is the result of adaptation to different dimensions.The similarities of their linguistic features exist mainly because they adapt to similar language structure,linguistic context and social-cultural context.The differences exist mainly because they adapt to different target readers and their own translation intentions.Though the language use in three translations is the result of adaptation to different dimensions,in the aspect of the number of adaptation dimensions,Cao Minglun's adaptation dimensions are the most among the three,which mainly present in the adaptation to language structure and contextual correlates: in the aspect of adaptation to language structure,Cao Minglun's version adapts to the language structure of both source language and the target language.Gao Jian's and Pu Long's versions generally adapt to the language structure of the source and target language,but both fail to adapt to the phonetic level,stylistic features as well as rhetorical device of the source language.In the aspect of adaptation to contextual correlates,Cao Minglun's version adapts to contextual correlates between the author,target readers and the translator,while Gao Jian's and Pu Long's versions fail to adapt to author's background.Research shows that the more dimensions a translator adapts to,the more successful the cross-cultural communication will be.