Translator's Adaptation And Selection From The Perspective Of Eco-Translatology

Martial arts culture is an important part of traditional Chinese culture.Jin Yong,the Chinese-speaking world's best-selling author,reproduced the Chinese history and culture in an epic style in his martial arts fictions.In 2018,the English publisher MacLehose Press released the English version of the first volume of his master work Shediao Yingxiong Zhuan.Under the name of Legends of the Condor Heroes 1-A Hero Born,the English version was translated by the Swedish translator Anna Holmwood.This is the first time it has been published and issued in English.Up to now,although a few journals and dissertations have done relevant research on the English translation of A Hero Born,no research has been conducted from the perspective of Eco-translatology.This thesis is a case study of the Legends of the Condor Heroes 1-A Hero Born from the perspective of eco-translatology,a relatively new approach to translation research.Based on the concept of "Translation as Adaptation and Selection" and taking"translator-centeredness" as the core,eco-translatology considers the translation activity to be translator's constant adaptation and selection in the process of translating.The purpose of the present investigation is to explore how the translator has adapted to the source-text-centered translational eco-environment and made her decisions to realize "three-dimensional transformation" respectively at linguistic,cultural and communicative dimension so as to produce a target text with a relatively high degree of holistic adaptation and selection.Through the analysis,the author found that at the first stage of the translating process,the source text(as a typically important element of the translational eco-environment)selected Anna Holmwood due to her bilingual and bicultural competence as well as her professional translation experience.At the same time,Holmwood made a reverse selection of the source text and macro-level strategies of translation in terms of adaptability.At the second stage of the translating process,Holmwood(as a typically important element of the translational eco-environment)made adaptive selections about the form of the target text in terms of three-dimensional transformations.At the linguistic dimension,Holmwood adopted strategies like omission,alliteration,change of parts of speech at the word level and made a rearrangement of the dialogue form and paragraph structure.In terms of cultural transformation,she mainly adopted literal translation and omission to depict the aesthetics of the fight scenes;literal translation to show the wide variety of Chinese food materials and cooking methods;and literal translation with explanation to introduce the position of acupoints and different effect caused by the attack at them.In light of communicative dimension,Anna Holmwood chose to provide target readers with a historical background and concepts central to kung fu world with five paratexts.Besides,she made selective deletion of some detailed historical and secondary information to ensure the reading fluency.Rewriting was also employed to realize the transformation of communicative intension.Although Anna Holmwood tried to make a proper adaptation and selection in the translating process,the loss of meaning and some mistranslations were inevitable due to her lack of deep understanding of the culture of the source language.In general,the English translation of Legends of the Condor Heroes-A Hero Born is the result of the translator's optimal adaptation and selection.