A Comparative Study Of Three Chinese Translations Of A Sand County Almanac In Light Of Eco-criticism

Over the past decades,ecological crisis has gradually become a global concern,which is considered to be one of the greatest challenges that the whole world has to face in the21~stt century.Therefore,we human beings have to rethink about the relationship between nature and ourselves.As a consequence,the Eco-studies have begun to flourish in the fields of Humanities and Social Sciences,including Eco-criticism in the literary studies.Eco-criticism means analyzing the man-nature relationship in the literary texts from an earth-centered perspective,criticizing anthropocentrism and discussing the role of Eco-literature that plays in reshaping a harmonious man-nature relationship.In terms of the translation of Eco-literature,how should translators preserve the ecological thoughts in the original text when translating?Are there any individual differences when different translators transplant the man-nature relationship from the original text?So far,no adequate attention has been given to these questions.Thus,this thesis will make a tentative study.A Sand County Almanac,one of the most famous representative works of Eco-literature and regarded as the Bible of Environmentalism,has won great popularity and praises all over the world since its publication.The ecological thoughts of Aldo Leopold are fully shown in this book.Thus,the concept“Land Ethic”and the thought“Thinking Like a Mountain”put forward by him were made known to the world.This book came out in the USA in 1949.Later on,it was translated into twelve different languages.So far,there have been fifteen Chinese versions of this book and twenty-three publishing houses have published its Chinese translations in China.This thesis will discuss the translation of the Eco-literature from the perspective of Eco-criticism.The Chinese translation of A Sand County Almanac is the main focus of this thesis.A comparative study of three Chinese versions of this book will be made and analyzed at three levels.To be specific,they are lexical level,syntactic level and rhetoric level.This thesis aims to probe into Eco-criticism's guidance on the translation of Eco-literature and study the approaches employed in different translations in reshaping the man-nature relationship and the effects that these approaches have exerted.In addition,by conducting a questionnaire survey,this thesis also proves that Guo's version is more readable and welcomed by readers.This thesis will try to provide a new perspective on the translation of Eco-literature.