Translation In Foreign Language Creation

Fu Shan’s World:The Transformation of Chinese Calligraphy in the Seventeenth Century targets Fu Shan,a famous Calligrapher living at the turn of Ming and Qing Dynasty,as a research object.It is an English academic monograph on Chinese calligraphy and culture by Bai Qianshen,a Chinese professor of art history.Wang Hongyin proposes that any writings in which the cultural content is expressed in a language which does not belong to that culture are called foreign language creations.Thus this thesis believes Fu Shan’s World is a foreign language creation.The English writing of Fu Shan’s World bases itself on some materials translated from Chinese,in other words,Bai Qianshen’s foreign language creation includes some overt or covert translation.As new the concept of foreign language creation is,there are not many researches on translation in foreign language creation,and the current researches mainly focus on literary works.Professor Hu Gengshen borrows some basic ideas from Darwin’s adaptation and selection doctrine,and proposes eco-tanslatology by combining these ideas with translation studies.This thesis mainly studies the types and functions of the translation in Fu Shan’s World,and analyzes how the translation is produced based on the translator’s adaptations and selections within the framework of eco-tanslatology.Both overt translation and covert translation can be found in Fu Shan’s World.The two kinds of translation serve for Bai Qianshen’s academic writing,which constitute an indispensable part of the text of foreign language creation and endow foreign language creation with a color of translation.Xunzi Tie is a calligraphic work by Fu Shan to explain his calligraphic thoughts.The English translation of the postscript to Xunzi Tie in Fu Shan’s World is analyzed in this thesis on the basis of Translation as Adaptation and Selection,one of the fundamental theories of eco-tanslatology.As Bai Qianshen has a triple identity of the reader,translator of the source text and writer of foreign language creation,his reasonable adaptations to the form and content of the postscript contribute to his proper selections of the English expressions of some key words.Sining Siwu is an important principle of calligraphy creation advocating by Fu Shan.Based on the analysis of its English translation,this thesis finds that the translator adapts to political,moral and calligraphic connotations of the principle.Bai Qianshen not only uses transliteration and literal translation in the translation process of Sining Siwu,but also selects a variety of synonyms in the same semantic field to construct writing context and to form intertextuality with common expressions in other English monographs on calligraphy,thus completing the meaning construction of sining Siwu.In a word,Bai Qianshen adapts to the eco-environment of source text and target text,and plays his dominant role in the translation process.Bai Qianshen’s English writing sheds light on foreign language creation:if writers need to translate Chinese materials in the writing process,they should first adapt to the translational eco-environment,and make appropriate selections of translation on the basis of a full understanding of the source text(the writer)and its background.What’s more,it is necessary for translators to deal with the translation flexibly according to the specific writing situations.