An Analysis On The Two Chinese Versions Of Waiting For Godot—from The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Adaption theory, a new pragmatic theory proposed by Jef Verschueren, offered a systematic and coherent method consisting of linguistic, cognitive, social and cultural analysis at the end of last century. According to his principle, language use should be a continuous making of linguistic choices with different degree of salience for the purpose of adaption. Translation, as a particular activity of language use and cross-cultural communication, therefore, can be studied by using the pragmatic adaptation theory. However, this theory has neither been given much attention nor widely used in translation studies. So based on the adaption theory, this thesis will attempt to analyze the two Chinese versions of Waiting for Godot, one by Shi Xianrong, the other by Liao Yuru.In the translation process, choice making and adaptation are two unavoidable elements, and the translator has to make continuous choices and adaptations in understanding the source text and reconstructing the target text. Then dynamic adaptation, the key notion of adaptation theory, is applied to examine how dynamic adaptation is incarnated in the two Chinese versions of Waiting for Godot from three aspects:temporal dimension, contextual correlates and linguistic structure. The comparison in this paper covers the different culture-loaded expressions, sexual description, choice of translating methods such as abridging, footnoting, and then explains these differences from the three respective aspects of the dynamic adaptation.This thesis makes a comparative analysis on the two versions to find the differences and the reasons. It can be found that translation by nature is a complex and continuous choice making activity, in which the translator dynamically adapts to external and internal linguistic structure with certain degrees of salience for certain purposes they have in mind. Besides, through the comparison, we can find that to keep the charm of classic works it is necessary to revise or re-translate them to keep abreast of times. The comparative analysis does not merely consider the linguistic level, but also the historical and social environment. Therefore, we can widely apply adaptation theory into translation studies in the future, not only for its great explanatory power but also for the new perspective it has peeped.