A Study On The English Translation Of Culture-specific Items In Mencius From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Culture-specific items are unique cultural expressions of a nation and have very distinct cultural characteristics.Culture-specific items are not limited to words,proprietary cultural items,such as phrases,sentences,text structure,all forms of unique cultural characteristics should be included.Because culture-specific items contain rich humanistic connotations and cultural characteristics,therefore,the culture-specific items in Chinese classical books are particularly prominent.Mencius contains a large number of cultural-specific items related to ecological culture,material culture,social culture,religious culture and linguist culture,which bring difficulties to the translation of texts.Adaptation Theory provides a theoretical framework for the English translation of culture-specific items.In the process of translating culture-specific items into English,active dynamic adaptation should be carried out from different angles of Adaptation Theory so as to achieve the purpose of translation.Based on this,this paper explores the specific forms of the translation of the culture-specific items in Mencius,discusses and analyzes the following research questions:What are the concrete adaptation approaches to the English translation of culture-specific items in Mencius?What kinds of adaptation strategies can be used to reduce deviations while translating culture-specific items in Mencius?It is found that Adaptation Theory can explain the translating of culture-specific items in Mencius from the following four aspects:adaptation to context,adaptation to structural objects,dynamic adaptation,translator's salience of adaptation.The specific pathes include adaptation to communicative context associated with physical,mental,social world adaptation,adaptation to linguist context related to contextual cohesion,intertextuality and sequencing,adaptation to structural objects of lexical,syntactic,discourse level.As for dynamic adaptation,historical and cultural adaptation can also be applied to the analysis of the English translation of culture-specific items in Mencius.At the same time,translator's translation purposes and perspectives will also influence their salience of adaptation on translating culture-specific items.Based on the above analysis,this paper proposes methods on reducing translation deviation of culture-specific items in Mencius,including communicative context adaptation in clarifying meaning transfer,linguistic context adaptation in reappearing textual purpose,linguistic structural adaptation in reflecting source language style,enhancing translator's sensitivity to different cultures.