A Comparative Study Of Two English Versions Of The Wandering Earth From An Eco-Translatology Perspective

The Wandering Earth is a science fiction novel written by Liu Cixin,a famous contemporary Chinese hard science fiction writer.Among Liu Cixin’s short science fiction collections,The Wandering Earth is the most famous,winning the China Galaxy Award.The Wandering Earth has received widespread attention from the science fiction,mainstream literature,and history of science communities and has inspired a wave of "Wandering Earth" fever.North American translator Holger Nahm and Chinese-American translator Ken Liu translated and published the English translation of The Wandering Earth in 2013 and 2017,respectively.Although the enthusiasm for science fiction literature creation and research is high,the corresponding translation research is relatively cold.And most of the current discussions about The Wandering Earth focus on the novel from the perspective of literary studies.There are few studies on the English translation of The Wandering Earth,and even fewer scholars have discussed the two English translations of The Wandering Earth from the perspective of ecological translation.Eco-translatology is an emerging Chinese translation theory proposed by Professor Hu Gengshen in 2008,which provides a unique theoretical perspective for the foreign translation of Chinese literature as an ecological approach to translation research of an interdisciplinary nature.This paper intends to take eco-translatology as the theoretical framework,select typical translation cases,use the combination of description and analysis,logic and discernment,compare and analyze the translation strategies of the two English translations of The Wandering Earth from the three dimensions of Eco-translatology,and deeply investigate the different adaptations and selections made by the two translators in different translation ecological environments,to dig out the reasons for the different translations.In this paper,firstly,in the stage of adaptive selection,the adaptation and selection in the linguistic dimension mainly focus on the translators’ transformation of science fiction words,syntax,and paragraphs;the adaptation and selection in the cultural dimension mainly study the translators’ adaptation to religious culture,social culture and language culture;the adaptation in the communicative dimension mainly focuses on the transformation of metaphor,repetition,and dialogue.Secondly,in the stage of selective adaptation,the differences between Ken Liu and Holger Nahm in translating The Wandering Earth are analyzed from the comparison of internal translation ecology and external translation ecology,respectively.It is intended that this research would broaden the breadth of eco-interpretation translatology while also offering a fresh theoretical viewpoint on the English translation of Chinese science fiction.It also hopes to provide some inspiration for the current research of Chinese science fiction translation.