A Study Of Zhang Guruo's Version Of David Copperfield From The Perspective Of Eco-translatology

The cultural turn in the 1990 s has deconstructed translation itself and confused translation studies.The continuation of this situation is obviously not conducive to the construction of translation theories in our country.In recent years,there has been a call to return to the ontological study of translation in translation circles of China.Against this background,eco-translatology emerges as the times require.Eco-translatology is developed on the basis of translation adaptation-selection theory.It is based on the similarity and isomorphism between translation ecology and natural ecology,takes the holistic view of ecology as its methodology,and takes the relationship between translator and translation ecology as its research object.It is a translation theory originating in China.Applying the theory of eco-translatology to the practice of literary translation is conducive not only to broadening the vision of literary translation but also to promoting the development and perfection of new theories.The translator's adaptation and selection in the process of translation directly affects the quality of the translated text.Translation is not only the mechanical transference of languages,but also the communication of textual message behind the language transference.Therefore,besides focusing on language conversion,we should also pay attention to the translator's adaptation and selection of texts from a comprehensive perspective of society,culture and communication.David Copperfield is a novel written by Charles Dickens,a well-known novelist.It has a wide range of materials and shows the social life of England in the mid-19 th century.Zhang Guruo's translation of David Copperfield is one of the most important sources for the study of classical translation in China.This thesis takes an approach of descriptive analysis to make a detailed case study of Zhang's translation and elaborates on the translator's multi-dimensional adaptation and selection.At the stage of translator's adaptation,the translator's selective adaptation to the ecological environment of the original will be explained from three aspects: need,competence and translational eco-environment.At the stage of translator's selection,the author mainly analyzes how the translator selects the source text from three dimensions: language,culture and communication dimensions.Finally,this thesis compares Dong Qiusi's translation with Zhang Guruo's translation in the case study,intending to further reflect the flexible adaptation and selection of Zhang's translation.Through the analysis of the selected cases in the original text,the thesis comes to draw the following conclusions:(1)In terms of translator's adaptation,Zhang Guruo's translation embodies the translator's adaptation to his personal ideal needs,bilingual competence in both Chinese and English,as well as the translation ecological environment.On the language dimension,the translator achieves the high degree of adaptation and selection through the conversion on the lexical,syntactic and rhetoric levels;secondly,on the cultural dimension,the translator achieves the transformation of cultural dimension through the application of refined translation and culture-loaded words.Finally,on the communicative dimension,the communicative purpose is achieved through the translation of dialogue under the original context.(2)Based on the theory of eco-translatology,this thesis mainly judges whether Zhang's version has produced the equivalent effect between his version and the original work by three criteria: the degree of multi-dimensional transformations,reader's feedback and translator's quality.Firstly,through multi-dimensional adaptations and selections,Zhang's version has achieved a high degree of holistic adaptation and selection in the dimensions of language,culture and communication.Secondly,in terms of translator's quality,Zhang Guruo's solid bilingual competence lays the foundation for the high equivalence of his translation.Finally,from the reader's feedback,Zhang's version is regarded as the best one and is widely welcomed by the readers,which also reflects the high degree of equivalent effect to the original.From this we can conclude that Zhang's translation is basically equivalent to the original.(3)Although Zhang's version has achieved higher “degree of holistic adaptation and selection”,the overuse of four-character idioms and annotations by the translator is also one of the focuses in the translation circles.From the perspective of eco-translatology,translation skills and methods should moderately be used so as to maintain the harmony and balance in ecology,which is also the inspiration for future literary translation.The author hopes that this thesis will contribute a little to the future development of literary translation studies and maturity of new theories.