Retranslation Study Of The Call Of The Wild From The Perspective Of Eco-translatology

As the bridge to promote cross-cultural communication, translation and its research develop as well as the study of literary criticism. Since the mid-20th century, with the emergence of global ecological trend, transformation of human civilization from industrial civilization to ecological civilization and development of new ecological interdisciplinary in the academical world, translation studies also began to turn to ecological study after experiencing the linguistic turn and cultural turn.Eco-translatology was further proposed by Professor Hu Gengshen in 2008 based on his theory of translation as adaptation and selection. It is the interdisciplinary subject of ecology and translation studies. It is interpreted as an ecological approach of translation or translation studies from an ecological perspective. The philosophical basis of eco-translatology are the traditional Chinese notion of "harmony between man and nature" and "adaptation and selection" of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. It advocates harmony and unity in translation, and emphasizes the holism of translational eco-enviroment and translator’s centredness in the process. On the basis of a series of concepts, it also interprets the essence, principle and method of translation activities and provides a new theoretical basis and perspective for translation practice and research.The Call of the Wild is the masterpiece of American writer Jack London. Since its publication in 1903, the novel has been translated into dozens of languages. In China, different translators’ passion for translating this novel has never waned. From the 1920s to the 21st century, there have been more than 32 different Chinese versions and a large number of critical articles. However, most articles were written from the view of themes or language aesthetics, and so far there are few scholars who have exoplored the Chinese version of this novel from the perspective of Eco-translatology.Concepts of eco-translatology show that the translation process is an activity in which translator adapts to translational eco-environment of source text and selects the target text on the basis of his own translational eco-environment. It is the interactive conversion of "natural selection" and "anthropic selection". "Natural selection" requires that the translator be equipped with the language and culture ability to translate the text in the first place. It is the premise and foundation of "anthropic selection" and it is also the touchstone of the translation after "anthropic selection". Therefore, translator who wants to succeed must firstly maximize his adaptation to "natural selection". The translator’s choices are concerned in "anthropic selection". It is subjective.Retranslation as a "natural phenomenon", is the result of changes of a variety of factors in translational eco-environment and translator’s motivations. Retranslation studies from the perspective of eco-translatology is feasible. The translation method of Eco-translatology, which is based on multi-dimensional transplantations, mainly focuses on the three dimensional transplantations. This on the one hand helps translators comprehensively analyze the original text and begin the translation, and on the other hand promotes translation critics’objective comments toward translation versions.This paper chooses three translated versions of The Call of the Wild by three different translators of different time as a representative for retranslation study of literatury works. It analyzes the translational eco-environments of the source text and three translation versions. It compares three translators’different adaptation and selection and summarizes their translation strategies. The results are that the three translators had their own "motivations", but they to some extent just adapted to one or a few levels of the original text or readers’expectations. They failed to integrally and objectively reproduce the original one.The translator is the most active factor in translation activity and the ambassador of cultural communication. He should consider a variety of factors to promote the "win-win" in cultural communication under the premise of his quality and quality of the translation improved and assured. Critics at the same time should have the holistic thought when analyzing different translations so as to push forward the development of translation teaching and research.