Study On The Translation Of Barry Lyndon From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Adaptation Theory, put forward by Verschueren, holds that language using is a process of a series of language choice-making under different salience, which may be subject to language itself or other factors. Adaptation Theory attracts extensive attention from its beginning. Ge Lingling, a Chinese scholar, firstly introduced Adaptation Theory to translation circle. Before long, further studies on Adaptation Theory and translation sprang up, ranging from the interpretation of Adaptation Theory for translation, to strategy chosen under Adaptation Theory and the application of Adaptation Theory in translation, etc.Barry Lyndon, written by William Makepeace Thackery, is characterized by its sarcastic description of the leading characters, which reveals the unhealthy ways and customs of the English society in 18th century through the witness of the up and down of an Irish youth. A screen adaption of this novel met a great success while the Chinese version of it, however, did not come out until January,2015, thus, study on the Chinese version of Barry Lyndon is rare.This paper explored the application of Adaptation Theory in translation by analyzing the Chinese version of Barry Lyndon from the following three dimensions of Adaptation Theory, that is, adaption to contextual correlates (including adaptation to linguistic context and communicative context), adaptation to structural objects (including adaptation to phonetic level, words and syntactic structure) and dynamic adaptation (including dynamic adaptation to time-sequence, context and structural object).The study found:1) Adaptation Theory speaks well for its interpretation in language choosing. Translation, a bilingual communicative process, requires the translator to make multi-dimensional choices and adaptations under Adaptation Theory; 2) the model of translation under the perspective of Adaptation Theory works in translating. Translation, the meaning-producing process, is the very process of analyzing the original text, getting the meaning of text and then choosing certain translation strategy to fulfill certain adaptation based on certain intentions; 3) target-reader plays an important role in translation. Translator needs to take target-reader’s requirements into consideration when translating, such as getting the main idea of the novel, learning foreign cultures and appreciating writing techniques, etc; 4) adaptation is multi-dimensional, but sometimes one can fail to realize adaptation of several levels at the same time, due to non-equivalence of vocabulary in Chinese and English, thus, translator is required to make a trade-off.This paper aimed at analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of the Chinese version of Barry Lyndon from the perspective of Adaptation Theory, and proving the interpretation of Adaptation Theory for translation and its value in guiding translation.