On The Translation Of Chinese And English Visual Verbs From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Five senses of human, especially the sense of seeing, are deemed as our origin of conceptualizing the world and acquiring knowledge. As a result, verbs of vision both in Chinese and English become a crucial category in the language system. However, the studies of visual verbs in Chinese or English principally emphasize on the description of translation phenomena, and seldom analyze translation techniques and methods with respect to the factors, which is a topic in need of further exploration.With the data of three kinds of visual verbs from nine well-received translation works of eight Chinese or English classic novels, the thesis analyzes the translation techniques as well as process types that those visual verbs are involved in, discusses the examples as cases of translator's adaptation, and exemplifies the factors influencing translator's choices. It is found that:(1) The average alteration rate (Number of cases of omission, modification and addition/Total number of cases) of visual verbs is quite high, with a proportion of 59.94% in C-E translation and 63.08% in E-C translation respectively, and the integral distribution about the process type of those verbs in target texts turns to be more dispersed and diversified than in the source texts. To be specific, the average rate of the cases of retainment in the ST in C-E translation is 48.68% (slightly less than 50%), among which the rates for intentional, resultative and existential verbs are 50.85%,46.81% and 50.00%; Moreover, the average rate of retainment in the ST in E-C translation is even higher, and the main technique for the change is addition in the TT with an average rate of 55.38%(slightly more than 50%), among which the relative rates for intentional, resultative and existential verbs are 59.38%,50.00% and 60.00%. The finding shows that faithfulness remains as a basis in translation practice while fluency is the primary translation criterion at the same time. In other words, to a certain degree, translators might sacrifice faithfulness in order to achieve fluency; (2) Omission is the major technique adopted among the altered cases in C-E translation, which is contrary to the result that the technique of addition occupies a large proportion in E-C translation. Since visual verbs are of a relatively strong subjectivity in that they stress on the intent, result or state of communications between human beings and the world, this finding is likely to result from the influence of transformation from the Chinese thinking mode featuring subject-object unity to the English featuring subject-object division. In addition, despite a relatively high proportion of retainment in E-C translation as mentioned in (1), it is worth noting that 10 cases of retainment out of the total 11 of the resultative visual verbs in the STs are translated as“??”,“??”or“??”.In other words, the English verbs like seeR, behold and observe which indicate the result are very likely to be altered into the form of "process+result" ("? +result") in Chinese, demonstrating the result-oriented feature of English and the process-oriented feature of Chinese; (3) The alterations and changes above are the choices made by translators to achieve adaptations on various levels. That is, the process of those adaptations tend to show a certain hierarchy, generally starting from the contextual adaptation of factors such as thinking mode, aesthetic view, ethical value and pragmatic principles, then to achieving the structural adaptation of the aspects like choice of words, and sentence patterns for coherence, thus consciously or unconsciously completing a dynamic process of adaptation; (4) Those unconscious adaptations are correlated with individual translator's "mind", especially the way of thinking influenced by their mother tongue. Take the two translated versions of Hongloumeng as an instance. The disparate translation methods of visual verbs by Yang Xianyi and Hawkes show that Yang's translation reflects the Chinese people' thinking mode featuring subject-object unity while Hawkes' version reveals the English people's objective consciousness.According to the findings, the thesis is of theoretical significance:First of all, it clarifies choices on the translation strategies between faithfulness and fluency, pointing out that translation practice is based on faithfulness while fluency is regarded as a primary criterion in the meantime. Therefore, the pursuit of fluency, to some extent, is adverse to that of faithfulness in translation; What is more, the pragmatic distinction between the process-oriented Chinese and the result-oriented English are further confirmed by the comparative study on visual resultative verbs in C-E translation and vice versa; Last but not least, on the basis of differences in the aspects of thinking mode, aesthetic view and pragmatic principles between the two languages, it offers a better operable mechanism to translators in in their hierarchically dynamic process of adaptation, which takes into consideration the influence of those linguistic and cultural distinctions on translators. Practically, the thesis has provided beneficial references for the translation of English and Chinese visual verbs, translation evaluation and teaching in the future.