A Comparative Study On The Two Chinese Versions Of Thoreau’s Prose A Week On The Concord And Merrimack Rivers From The Perspective Of Eco-translatology

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers is one of the excellent works of American transcendentalist Thoreau.This book records the travel of Thoreau and his brother on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.Thoreau seeks the meaning of life and spiritual habitat in nature.His complex ecological thoughts and ecological wisdom alert and enlighten the modern people in ecological crisis.With people’s reexamining the relationship between man and nature,and the eagerly calling for the works that reflect ecological harmony,there is a large space for the research on A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers that embodies Thoreau’s ecological thoughts.Eco-translatology originated in 2001,and publication of Eco-translatology: A Primer in Chinese Translators Journal in 2008 by Professor Hu Gengshen marked the establishment of eco-translatology.Guided by neo-ecologicalism,eco-translatology is a research paradigm to overview and describe translation from the ecological perspective,taking translation ecology and nature ecology as isomorphic metaphor.Under the guidance of eco-translatology,this thesis makes a comparative study on the English-Chinese translation of Thoreau’s prose A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers by taking the two Chinese versions of Yu Ling and Cao Xiaoling as examples.Chapter one mainly introduces research background,research significance,research questions and methodology as well as structure of the thesis.Chapter two systematically reviews previous studies on eco-translatology at home and abroad,and the studies of Thoreau’s prose A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers in China.Chapter three presents the origin,development and main concepts of eco-translatology.Chapter four discusses Yu ling’s and Cao Xiaoling’s selective adaptation to translational eco-environment in detail,mainly analyzing the adaptation to the needs and original text.Chapter five focuses on Yu ling’s and Cao Xiaoling’s adaptive selection to translation methods from linguistic dimension,cultural dimension and communicative dimension.Chapter six summarizes the major findings and limitations of the thesis,and puts forward some suggestions for the future research.It is found that Yu Ling tends to maintain the features of the original language,trying to be faithful to the source text and conveying the thoughts and emotions of the original author by colloquial language.However,Cao Xiaoling is inclined to show the rhythmic beauty of the prose,adding more literary color to her translation and focusing on the transmission of cultural connotation and communicative intention.If the translators adopt the language of closing to life and nature,their translation can better conform to the writing style of Thoreau and achieve a more influential expression effect.The translation behaviors of the translators will inevitably be influenced by translational eco-environment.And different translation methods will be selected by the translators due to various factors such as the purpose of translation,the communicative intention of original text and the acceptance of readers.In the process of three-dimensional transformations,it is difficult to say which translated text has done the appropriate adaptation and selection in all dimensions because of the different emphasis of translators.However,only by paying attention to the eco-holism and the harmony and unity of the ecological elements in translation,can translators successfully achieve higher degree of holistic adaptation and selection.This thesis can open a new research perspective for the English-Chinese translation of Thoreau’s prose A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers,and further prove the feasibility applying eco-translatology to study prose works.