A Report On The E-C Translation Of Granted (Chapters 17-24) From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Children’s fantasy novels,which have unique characteristics and special target readers,are an important part of children’s literature.Granted is the one written by an American writer John David Anderson.It was released in 2018 and there is no Chinese version yet.This novel is fascinating,and one of the climaxes is in Chapters 17-24,where the writer uses many special structures and expressions.It is worthwhile to explore how to translate these contents to conform to the reading habits and abilities of Chinese children while ensuring the accuracy.“Adaptation theory” was first proposed by Jef Verschueren in 1987 and further refined in his book Understanding Pragmatics in 1999.In his view,the process of language use is a process of “making linguistic choices”,and there are three key notions in it,which are variability,negotiability and adaptation.The three key notions lead to four angles of investigations: “contextual correlates of adaptability”,“structural objects of adaptability”,“dynamics of adaptability” and“salience of the adaptation processes”.According to the translation practice,this report will analyze the problems that arise in the translation process,including diction,syntax and rhetoric difficulties,and discuss the solutions from the perspective of adaptation theory,mainly the three angles of “contextual correlates of adaptability”,“structural objects of adaptability” and “dynamics of adaptability”,by using the translation practice of Chapters 17-24 of Granted as the case.After the discussion,the imagery in the text that may be difficult for Chinese children to understand should be added explanations or be replaced with imagery they are familiar with,and those illogical connecting words should also be modified from the angle of“contextual correlates of adaptability”.From the angle of “structural objects of adaptability”,short sentences of the same nature need to be appropriately grouped according to the context,and the dashes should be appropriately deleted,if the deletion won’t affect the meaning,to avoid disrupting the reading rhythm.From the angle of “dynamics of adaptability”,when translating the names,vocations and expressions of fairies,the translator chooses words that sound similar to original ones while they also express the meanings that original ones have.And if it’s difficult to keep both effects,words that can express the original meanings will be the priority.The translator hopes this report will be instructive for future translations of children’s fantasy novels.