On Textual Adaptation In Translation

With coherence in structure, integrality in meaning, and as a structure-meaning unity, text is the basic unit of communication. Textual translation is the holistic translation process consisting of the comprehension of the source text and the reproduction in the target language. Translation as a form of linguistic communication should be a textual transformation based on the holistic meaning of the whole text.In recent years, due to the rapid developments in linguistics, translation studies have seen an unprecedented prosperity, and there have emerged a large number of research papers and books on textual translation. However, the author finds that previous studies failed to reveal the internal mechanism of textual translation as a pragmatic process, and they have paid inadequate attention to how the translator makes his decisions in the process of translation. The theory of adaptation points out that language use is a process of continuous choice-making due to the three properties of language, i.e. variability, negotiability and adaptability. In the framework of the theory of adaptation, focusing on the implications of structural objects of adaptability for textual translation, the author proposes that in order to reach a natural and coherent target text, the translator, beside conveying the original author's communicative intention, he should at the same time adapt to the text patterns of the target text through optimal choice which can be more easily found through a close contrastive study of Chinese and English texts. Aiming at shedding light on the proper choice in constructing the target text, this thesis has made a tentative analysis of the major textual differences between Chinese and English, i.e. linearity vs. spirality, parataxis vs. hypotaxis, subject-consciousness vs. object-consciousness. In response to these textual differences, the specific techniques of adaptation in text translation are proposed, i.e. recasting, reversing, perspective changing.