A Study On The Translation Of Jia From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Jia is an influential and outstanding novel in describing Chinese feudal families in modern literature.Since it was finished in 1932,it was repeatedly republished both at home and abroad and was adapted as drama,film and teleplay.Up to now,it has been translated into more than 20 languages such as English,French,German,Russian,Japanese,Thai etc.and it has obtained the worldwide prestige.In 1958,the Foreign Languages Press published its English version The Family which was translated by the famous translator and sinologist Sidney Shapiro.Up to now,scholars conducted a large amount of studies on Jia including papers and monographs.However,studies on its English version are relatively few and most of them are studied in the framework of translation aesthetics,literary stylistics,functional translation theory and system-functional linguistics.More systematical and comprehensive studies need to be conducted from other perspectives.In this paper,the author chose The Family as the object of study in the perspective of Verschueren's Adaptation Theory.This paper aims to explore and analyze the adaptation of the English translation of Jia and what factors may affect the language choices of the translator and how the translator makes these adaptations.This paper includes five parts as follows,the introduction,literature review,theoretical framework,the analysis of the translation of Jia in light of Adaptation Theory and the conclusion.Literature review mainly focuses on the previous studies on the application of Adaptation Theory to translation,the studies on application of Adaptation Theory to literary translation and the studies of the translation of Jia.The detailed analysis covered following aspects of Adaptation Theory:contextual correlates of adaptability,structural objects of adaptability,dynamics of adaptability and salience of adaptability.This thesis draws the following conclusions: Firstly,during the process of translation,as well as the process of making language choices,the translator has made adaptations to various factors.From macro perspective,it includes the language system of target language,the cultural value orientation of target language and the cognitive system of target readers.On the micro level,it refers to the adaptation to all levels of language structures.Secondly,Sidney Shapiro made adaptations by adopting domestication as the major translation strategy and combining it with foreignization in the translation of Jia.To be specific,Sidney Shapiro mainly employed following translation methods,which are literal translation,free translation,the combination of literal and free translation,omission,amplification,conversion,transliteration.Thirdly,Sidney Shapiro's translation of some cultural elements remain to be discussed.It is expected that this study could make a slight contribution to enrich the study of the translation of Jia and the translation of other Chinese literary works.