A Report On The C-E Translation Of Comic Story Series:The Analects Of Confucius Newly Interpreted By Jinshu From The Perspective Of Linguistic Adaptation Theory

The Analects of Confucius Newly Interpreted by Jinshu is a comic book composed by Professor Zhu Jinshu,who adapts The Analects of Confucius into comic series to introduce Confucius’ philosophical notions,educational ideas and teaching methods.Aiming to interpret The Analects of Confucius with the combination of logical stories and vivid pictures,this book tries to help readers of all ages understand The Analects of Confucius and carry forward Chinese traditional culture.Under the guidance of linguistic adaptation theory,the translator translates the stories in the book from Chinese to English.Linguistic adaptation theory proposes that using language is a process of making continuous linguistic choices.Language users are able to perform linguistic choicemaking because language has three traits: variability,negotiability,and adaptability.If adaptability is used as the starting point,language use can be described and explained from four aspects: contextual correlates of adaptability,structural objects of adaptability,dynamics of adaptability,and salience of the adaptation process.In essence,translation and language use are both processes of continuous choicemaking.Therefore,under the view of a general perspective on language,this translation practice is informed by linguistic adaptation theory in the following aspects: 1)adaptation to the genre of the original text and target readers;2)adaptation to culture context;3)adaptation to linguistic context;and 4)adaptation to language structures.The textual characteristics are extracted based on the analysis of the original text and can be summarized as: 1)intertextuality between texts and pictures,2)balloon constraint,3)various Chinese culture-specific expressions,and 4)lack of sufficient context information.Under the guidance of linguistic adaptation theory,the translator uses the translation techniques of omission and substitution to ensure the intertextuality between texts and pictures.Constrained by the dialogue balloon,omission and combination are adopted to ensure the appropriate length of translation based on the adaptation to different language features and the genre of comics.Omission,extension,transliteration and replication are used to deal with the different types of Chinese culture-specific expressions.Addition and explanation are adopted to solve the problem of insufficient context information,ensuring the coherence of the translation based on the adaptation to the comprehension abilities of the target readers.This translation report summarizes the adopted translation techniques by taking the four textual features of the original text as the analytical dimensions,to provide a strategic reference for the translation of comics embedded with Chinese traditional culture.