On Michael Berry’s Translation Of To Live Using Perspectives From Translation As Adaptation And Selection

Since the beginning of the cultural turn in this field,translation involves a much more complicated task because the culture of each language influences the word choices involved to express the same meaning.In translation activities,the translator is not invisible as he or she was before,and his/her main role has become increasingly prominent.Under this new trend,Hu Gengshen put forward a systematic approach involving adaptation and selection.His theory makes the translator central to the whole process,and states that the translator’s choice of translational ecological environment is the essence of translation.Yu Hua is a contemporary Chinese avant-garde novelist.The novel,To Live,which was published in 1993,is one of his prototypical works.Because of its popularity,this novel can be found around the world having been produced in many languages.Its English version was translated by American scholar Michael Berry in2003.The English version continues to have good ratings on the websites of America’s top booksellers,years after its publication.The current research on this novel is vast,but rarely does it cover Michael Berry’s versions from the perspective of holistic adaption and selection.In response to this gap,this paper focuses on Berry’s translation as its research object,using Translation as Adaptation and Selection(TAS)by Hu Gengshen as the theoretical basis for this translation research.This paper attempts to understand the translation version of Michael Berry in terms of the eco-environment existing with the particular languages involved as original and target in his work,the way in which the translator adapts to this eco-environment,and the translation strategies and techniques employed by him,namely three-dimensional transformation in the process of translation.At first,this paper reviews the development of TAS theory and its application.Then,introduces its main concepts.At last,analyze Michael Berry’s translation strategy emphatically.Through the study of To Live,this paper reaches a conclusion that the translational eco-environment for Berry roughly includes two aspects: first,the world presented by the source text or source language,including the originallanguage characteristics,writing style,rhetorical devices,and Chinese culture;second,target text environment comprised of the target language and its culture,the target readers,the ideology of western society,and the western people’s comprehension of contemporary Chinese novels and Chinese history.In order to remain the writing style of original language and to spread the Chinese culture,the translator used literal translation and free translation.However,this paper suggests that in translating some specific culture-loaded words and expressions,Berry may be add further explanations to the literal translation for the sake of target readers.This essay proved that TAS theory is convincing which can explain the translation of literary works.The author hopes this paper will contribute to the study of native theory and gives imputes to the “going out” of Chinese contemporary novels.