Adaptive Selections: A Study On Translation Of The Song Of Everlasting Sorrow From The Perspective Of Eco-translatology

Wang Anyi’s novel The Song of Everlasting Sorrow was translated by Americansinologist Michael Berry and Susan Chan Egan and it was published by ColumbiaUniversity press in2008. After the English version published, it was payed greatattention by some mainstream media and shown much affection by western readers,which not only made Wang Anyi and her novel accepted by the western readers, but alsothe translation competence of translators was affirmed by translation field.Each successful translation work is closely related to its translators. However, thetraditional translation studies emphasize the study of source text and target culture, thesubjectivity of translator is neglected. Eco-translatology proposed by Professor HuGengshen takes translator as the center of translation, which provides a theoretical basisfor the present author to study the translation of The Song of Everlasting Sorrow.Based on the theory of eco-translatology, the present paper studies translation of TheSong of Everlasting Sorrow systematically through approaches of literature review andcomparative analysis. At first, the present author makes a literature review to the studiesof eco-translatology and the translation of The Song of Everlasting Sorrow. Secondly, byreferencing Hu Gengshen’s idea of translational eco-environment, the translationaleco-environment of The Song of Everlasting Sorrow is analyzed systematically fromthree aspects, source text, the translator, the target language world. Finally, throughcontrastive analysis the Chinese and English version of The Song of Everlasting Sorrow,the present author demonstrates the selections that the translator made in The Song ofEverlasting Sorrow translating adapted to its translational eco-environment fromlinguistic, cultural and communicative dimensions through some typical examples. Through the study to English version of The Song of Everlasting Sorrow, followingfindings are gained: Firstly, the competence, needs, translation experience and attitude ofBerry adapt to the source-text-based translational eco-environment, therefore he can beselected by the source text. Secondly, in translation process of The Song of EverlastingSorrow, Berry took the restriction that the target-text-based eco-environment exerts intranslation activity into consideration. At last, the successful output of The Song ofEverlasting Sorrow owns to the selections Berry made from linguistic, cultural andcommunicative dimensions in translating process. These selections are of certainadaptivity to the whole translational eco-environment. From the major findings, it can beconcluded that any successful translation work is on the basis of the translator’sconsideration to the restriction of translational eco-environment. Moreover, the translatoris required to adapt to translation eco-environment maximally through a series ofselections in linguistic, cultural and communicative dimensions.Studying The Song of Everlasting Sorrow from perspective of eco-translatoloy notonly provides a new angle for its study but also helps the western readers have a betterunderstanding to the novel. What’s more, analyzing the reason that translation of TheSong of Everlasting Sorrow got success from translator’s adaptations and selectionsprovided some inspiration for the output of Chinese contemporary literary works.