The Translator As The Center Of Translation Activities

The cultural turn in translation studies has brought about unprecedented progress in the studies of translators. Researchers’ attention has been shifted from translation strategies and skills to translators’ subjectivities. These studies, however, are still fragmented and insufficient in making systematic interpretation of how the translator manipulates the whole process of the translation activity. Hu Gengshen’s Approach to Translation as Adaptation and Selection is the first monograph dealing with the translator’s central role in translation activity. Its central ideas are as follows:translation is the translator’s adaptation and selection to translational eco-environment, and both the adaptation and the selection are carried out by the translator, who is the controller of the translation activity.With translator centeredness as its main focus, this article takes Hu Gengshen’s approach to translation as adaptation and selection as its theoretical framework. Researches are conducted to the translator’s adaptation and selection in the translating process, and interpretations are given to the translator’s adaptive selection in specific translational eco-environments.Within the theoretical framework, this thesis carries out a tentative study on Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang’s version of Selected Stories of Lu Xun. Elucidations about the translators’adaptation and selection are demonstrated in the aspects of needs, competence and translational eco-environment, among which expatiation is given to the aspect of translational eco-environment. Analysis and evidences for this argumentation are presented from linguistic, cultural and communicative dimensions.Conclusion can be drawn that the only subject of translation activity is the translator, who plays a central role in dominating the whole translating process. Therefore, translators ought to be highly aware that it is their responsibility to conduct rational adaptation and selection for the purpose of doing things with translation.