An Eco-translatological Study On Goldblatt's Adaptation And Selection In Translating The Field Of Life And Death

Eco-translatology,as a home-born translation theory,has been given a lot of attention and recognition in recent years.The theory adopts Darwin's theory of evolution "natural selection" or "survival of the fittest" and the eastern philosophical thoughts and ecological wisdom,and combines ecology and translatology.Eco-translatology is about translation studies from an ecological perspective and it aims at offering some new descriptions and explanations of the nature of translation,translation process,translation standards,translation principle,translation methods and so on.Howard Goldblatt's translation The Field of Life and Death is chosen as the subject of this case study and is interpreted from the perspective of "Translation As Adaptation and Selection"(TAS)in Eco-translatology.The study mainly analyses how Goldblatt adapts to the "translational eco-environment" and makes adaptive selection or transformation from three dimensions,that is,linguistic dimension,cultural dimension and communicative dimension to produce a proper translation,one of high "degree of holistic adaptation and selection".After comparing and analyzing the original novel and its translation,we can find that Goldblatt has adapted himself to the specific translational eco-environment and made adaptive selection or transformation from the three dimensions.To be more specific,he has adapted himself to five main factors in the translational eco-environment—the source text,the source language and the target language,the social-cultural context of the source text,readers' expectation and acceptability and the translator's interest and competence.The influence of some other factors like the patron,the publisher and the editor is not obvious in this translation activity.Adaptive transformation from the linguistic dimension in the translation The Field of Life and Deaths specifically,is carried out at rhetorical,lexical and syntactic levels;adaptive transformation from the cultural dimension can be found when Goldblatt deals with the dialects,the culture-loaded words,the folk songs and the folk customs;adaptive transformation from the communicative dimension can be noticed when Goldblatt tries to convey the original author's idea and meanwhile attempts to merge his own understanding into the translation.There are two main reasons to do such a study.On the one hand,the original novel Sheng Si Chang has not only established Xiao Hong's status in Chinese literary history,but receives attention and recognition because of its unique narrative style and deep thoughts on humanity,both at home and abroad.Up to the present,although a good number of studies have been carried out on her and this novel,few scholars conduct researches on its English translation.In fact,only one thesis has studied its translation strategies from the perspective of feminist narratology.Thus this study offers a new perspective and accordingly enriches existent studies of the English translation The Field of Life and Death.Moreover,the novel has been translated again by Howard Goldblatt in 2002,and the act shows that this novel in his mind is quite important and valuable.Given that Chinese culture(including Chinese literature)is going global,studying how an eminent translator adapts to a translational eco-environment to select a proper translation of an excellent Chinese writer's masterpiece is essential.For it can help future translators,especially beginners,work better on translation activities.On the other hand,eco-translatology is recently put forward and existent researches on it are not as sufficient as other other full-blown translation theories.Prof.Hu Gengshen himself also expresses his expectation in his academic studies that he hopes more people could join in and perfect existent researches to realize the sustainable development of eco-translatology.