A Study On Arthur Waley's Translation Of Tao Te Ching From The Perspective Of Eco-translatology

Translation studies has been transformed from linguistics to culture and then to ecology since the early 1990 s.And ecological awareness has become more and more important in the academic world,and many scholars think that translation should also be brought back to “eco-translational environment.” It means that to judge the quality of the translated text from the perspective of ecology.Based on the previous research on ecology,Hu Gengshen proposed Eco-translatology.As a new multi-disciplinary theory of study,Eco-tranlatology sheds a new light on the process,nature,demand and method of translation.Under the guidance of Ecological Holism,Eco-tranlatology studies translation from the perspective of “Adaption and Selection” by means of the basic principle of Darwin's “survival of the fittest” as well as “elimination of inferior” and.As a representative work of Lao Tzu,Tao Te Ching,has attracted many researchers' interests at home and abroad,and they translated Tao Te Ching into different languages and carried out various studies of it.Guided by Eco-translatology,the thesis examines to what extent that Eco-translatology explains translation process in Arthur Waley's English version.This thesis firstly introduces the background,significance and the structure of the study,and then summarizes studies on Tao Te Ching at home and abroad.Next,it discusses the theoretical framework of the thesis: Eco-translatology.The thesis studies and analyzes Waley's English translation of Tao Te Ching at two stages: adaption and selection.At the stage of translator's adaption,the thesis tries to elaborate translator's adaption to eco-environment of source text mainly from the perspective of translational environment,eco-text environment and the translator's bilingual competence.At the stage of selection,the thesis is generally from three dimensional aspects respectively: linguistic dimension,cultural dimension and communicative dimension.Linguistic dimensional selection focuses on lexical,syntactic and rhetorical levels.And Cultural dimensional selection mainly emphasizes how the translator manages cultural-loaded words with different translational strategies.Finally,it discussed from Waley's selection of translational style.Eco-translatology is entirely feasible for interpreting Waley's English translation of Tao Te Ching.The success of the translated texts and its acceptance of target readers are the result of his positive adaptation to “translational eco-environment.” However,the theory has gradually exposed several shortcomings in the course of study.For instance,in the actual process of translation,there is overlapping between “Adaption” and “Selection.” Therefore,it is necessary to carry out further study on Eco-translatology in order to overcome its shortcomings.Under the guidance of Eco-translatology,and through analysis of Waley's English translation of Tao Te Ching,the thesis proves that Eco-translatology can be used to analyze in the process of translation.By collecting and researching some concepts like “Eco-translatology,” “Translational Eco-environment,” “Multi-dimentional Adaption and Selection,” the thesis confirms feasibility of using Eco-translatology to interpret the English version of Tao Te Ching.