A Comparative Study On English Versions Of Fu Sheng Liu Ji From The Perspective Of Cultural Context Adaptation

Translation is a cross-cultural communicative activity.Under the development of globalization and cultural pluralism,the translation of Chinese classics becomes an indispensable means for cultural exchanges between different countries.Verschueren believed that language use and choice is required to adapt dynamically to different context,thus meeting the requirement of translation to the outmost.The translators make dynamic adaptation to different cultural contexts by choosing the most appropriate translation strategies,so as to realize the transfer of cultural information in translation and further receive the optimal translation effect.Fu Sheng Liu Ji is one of the most influential Chinese literary classics,which connotes rich content of Chinese traditional culture and characteristics.This thesis,mainly from the perspective of dynamic adaptation of cultural context,choose Lin Yutang's and Leonard Pratt & Chiang Su-hui's version of FSLJ as a case study,which lay emphases on exploring the translators' dynamic adaptation and selection during the translation process by means of exemplification and descriptive analysis in view of different translation strategies applicable to different cultural context.The study is expected to further broaden translation research perspectives,and then provide the beneficial enlightenment for cultural classics translation studies.Through comparative analysis to typical cultural-characteristic examples selected from the two English versions of FSLJ,it is found that the whole process of translation is actually a process of dynamic adaptation and selection to different cultural context.The translator's translation strategies serve for dynamic adaptation to different cultural contexts of the source text and the target text.The difference between these two versions lies in Lin's main adaptation to the target language culture for eliminating the strangeness of the western readers understanding,thus its inclination to domestication,while Pratt Leonard and Chiang Su-hui's main adaptation to source language culture for avoiding misunderstanding of westerners to Chinese culture,and its foreignization orientation instead.In any case,the strategies employed in these two versions are interconnected inherently and complementary to each other.Therefore,the theory of adaptation is really workable and worthwhile for translation of Chinese literary classics,further facilitating the spread of traditional Chinese culture.