Translation Of Images In Burton Watson’s English Version Of Zhuangzi: From The Perspective Of Contextual Adaptation

Zhuangzi, a well-known classical literature in China, is a representative philosophical work of Taoist School. It is admired and appreciated by numerous generations of readers for its imaginary stories and beautiful languages. Many of its philosophical thoughts have even made profound influences on people in modern time. In the work, images, which carry deep implications and reflect Zhuangzi’s emotions and beliefs, play important roles in the fables and anecdotes of the text. They vary in different forms and present diverse postures, which have added enormous difficulties for translation.Adaptation Theory is firstly proposed by Verschueren in his book Understanding Pragmatics in2000. His Perspective View of Pragmatics offers a new angle to investigate pragmatics. According to Adaptation Theory, language use is a continuous making of linguistic choices taken place at every possible level. Choice-making should adapt to context and linguistic structure dynamically on the basis of different salience. As translation is a cross-cultural activity, the switches of two language codes are closely related to language reality and extra-linguistic factors. Therefore, it is translator’s obligation to make adaptation to complex contexts between two languages. This thesis applies Adaptation Theory to image translation, trying to convince the possibility of dealing with translation problems under such a pragmatic theory.The author makes a general classification of typical images in Zhuangzi according to Chen Zhi’e’s concept (1990) and summarizes characteristics of these images. Provided with these information, the author makes an analysis on image translation of Watson’s version of Zhuangzi under the guidance of contextual adaptation in Adaptation Theory, exploring how adaptations are achieved by Watson, how he makes appropriate choices under different communicative contexts:mental world, social world and physical world respectively, and finally concludes his primary translation principles.The study shows that Watson adheres to the principles of fidelity and readability in his translation. He tries to follow the precise wording and syntax of the original text, and uses fluent and easy-to-understand language to make the translated text readable to target readers. Under these principles, he attempts to make choices best adapted to various contextual circumstances.Th is thesis introduces a pragmatic theory in viewing translation of Zhuangzi and puts emphasis on the aspect of images, in hopes that on the one hand, the Contextual Adaptation Theory can enrich the translation researches of Zhuangzi; on the other hand the thesis can provide new ways for image translation.