On Chapter Title Translation In Three Kingdoms Linguistic Adaptation Approach

Based on Linguistic Adaptation Theory initiated by Dr. Verschueren, our research is to study translation of chapter titles from Three Kingdoms both qualitatively and quantitatively. Then we arrive at the following major findings.At the phonetic level, weak adaptability is found, which can be compensated by turning to poetic roots in English. At the syntactic level, high adaptability is observed: micro-antithesis (71.7% of the cases get adapted successfully) and macro-antithesis (58.75% of the cases get adapted successfully). At the semantic level, we cut in via counterevidence first, sorting out the proportion of overinformativeness (1.67%) and underinformativeness (12.91%) according to the Quantity Maxim in Cooperative Principle by Grice. At the pragmatic level, we find 85% of the cases are adapted according to information structure of the source text.Grounded on our empirical analysis, we try to set up an adaptive mechanismunderlying the translation of chapter title according to the weight of each layer ofadaptability and their ensuing rank derived from Optimality Theory (Kager24-59):C-semantic layer > C-pragmatic layer > C- syntactic layer >C- phonetic layer(C is for Constraint)...