A Research On The English Translation Of Gnomic Verses About Water And Tree From The Perspective Of Eco-translatology

Gungthang Tenpai Dronme is a distinguished Tibetan poet,the third Gungthang Rinpoche,a senior monk of the Gelug Sect of Tibetan Buddhism in the Tang Dynasty.His Gnomic Verses about Water and Tree,in essence,is the product of secularized Buddhist Classics.It spreads Buddhist philosophy by means of a perfect combination of Buddhist terms and secularized language.It belongs to one of the Tibetan classics,which mainly pays attention to the publicity of religious doctrine and the introduction of morality and ethics.The main feature of the anthology is that “water” and “tree” are used as metaphors for natural images to illustrate the theme and express a profound insight of Buddhism in incisive reasoning and vivid words.This is not only the integration of the nature images in stanzas,but also reflects the harmony between the typical elements of human and natural ecological environment,which is of great significance in terms of literature and art,ecological value.Eco-translatology is based on its precursor——translation adaption and selection.It combines “ecology” with “translation”,catering to the development trend of the “Big Ecological Era”,and focusing on the comprehensive study of text ecology,“translation community” and translation environment ecology.It examines the translation activities in the“translational eco-environment” with the translator as its core,breaking the traditional pattern of the source text-centered theory and reader-centered theory,and paving a new way for the establishment of translation research.Under the principle of “multidimensional adaption and adaptive selection”,the theory concentrates on “three-dimensional” adaptive transformations in linguistic dimension,cultural dimension and communicative dimension.This is conducive to the construction of a harmonious and unified translation ecological environment led by the translator and provides methodological guidance and reference for the cross-cultural exchange of Chinese national minority classics translation in the coming future.Guided by eco-translatology,this thesis analyzes the English versions of Gnomic Verses about Water and Tree by Professor Li Zhengshuan by means of literature method,close reading and case analysis.The thesis consists of five parts.Introduction includes the life of Gungthang Tenpai Dronme,creation background,brief introduction to Gnomic Verses aboutWater and Tree,research status of Gnomic Verses about Water and Tree at home and abroad,and the introduction of the basic theory of eco-translatology.Chapter One explores whether the translator reproduces the language form and content of the source text from the aspects of diverse rhyming approaches,wording in translation of Buddhist terms and rhetorical devices.Chapter Two explores whether translators can make adaptive selection of the source text in the cultural ecological dimension to reconstruct the cultural environment of the source text from the following respects: religious cultural allusions,idiomatic expressions and translation of culture-loaded words in gnomic verses.Chapter Three explores translators' selection translation strategies to achieve communicative purposes from the perspective of integration of domestication and foreignization,cognitive context adaptive transformation in the dimension of communicative ecology.In Conclusion,the thesis points out that in the practice of Chinese Classic translation,the translator should give priority to “three-dimensional”transformations,select proper translation strategies in a view to building a harmonious and balanced translational eco-environment,and finally producing English versions with high degree of holistic adaption and selection.