Comparative Analyses On Translation Of Culture-Loaded Terms In Lao Can You Ji From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Lao Can You Ji,one of four famous satirical novels in the late Qing Dynasty,plays a significant role throughout the history of Chinese novels.It records the traveling and real experiences of the leading role and author,Lao Ts' an,reflecting the miserable life of people and the darkness of the society at that time by revealing the corruption of the government and the cruelty of so-call upright officials.Endowed with elegant language,attractive story and profound Chinese culture,it has received great popularity as soon as it entered the western world.However,the other Chinese classics do not enjoy the same treatment because they are translated far from as beautiful as the originals,especially the translation on culture-loaded terms,which directly impacts the quality of translation for they carry the culture on their shoulders.Lao Can You Ji,as a well-received translation,thus is worth our attention and research,but it is rarely studied from the Adaptation theory on its culture-loaded terms according to the former researches.As a result,the thesis attempts to carry out the research on culture-loaded terms from the Adaptation theory in the hope of discovering some principles and providing some suggestion for future translation on Chinese classics.Under the guidance of the Adaptation theory,two English versions will be compared and analyzed.Two versions are respectively translated by the couple,Yang Xianxi and Glaydis Yang,and an American sinologist,Harold Shadick.Throughout the whole research,two research methods are mainly adopted: comparative analysis approach and case analysis method.Based on the comparative analyses,several conclusions have been drawn: 1)Translating is a dynamic communication process and in order to maximize the communication effect the translators ought to choose the language with the consideration of the language itself,society and culture and communication inclination of target language other than these of source language.2)In translating culture-loaded terms in Chinese classics,translators are supposed to make his language choices adaptive to the context and language habits and take the cognition,accept capacity and culture inclination of target readers into account.3)Translators' education background,living environment,language preference and translation competence and so on will make great difference on the quality of translation,which requires the translators to take such factors seriously and make full preparation before beginning the work so that faithful and authentic language and culture will be perfectly conveyed.4)All the translation methods other than free translation and literal translation are acceptable on condition that they can adequately serve for the translation purpose.Further,the thesis proves the feasibility of the Adaptation theory in literary translation,especially in Chinese classics.With the enlightenment of the Adaptation theory,Chinese classics will better appear into the sight of westerners.