Abstract

The author of Pygmalion, Bernard Shaw as a British playwright is considered only second to Shakespeare in the history of British Drama. His book Pygmalion has been translated into many Chinese versions, among which Yang Xianyi’s received a substantial popularity and was revised and reprinted for several times. The adaptation theory was put forward by Verschueren in his book Understanding Pragmatics. According to Verschueren, language use is a dynamic process of making choices both internally and externally, and the choices are made based on different levels of consciousness. Language has three important properties—Variability, Negotiability and Adaptability. Among them adaptability is the key to language use, because the users of language must make dynamic adaptation in language use according to the relevant contexts. The ingredients of communicative context include mental world, social world and physical world. The paper mainly analyzed the application of translation strategies in Yang’s translation of Pygmalion from the above three worlds. Firstly, the paper introduced the previous studies of Pygmalion and the limitations of previous translation theories. The paper tried to apply the adaptation theory to the literary translation, and study the application of non-linguistic context in detail. Then it discussed the application from three aspects: mental world, social world and physical world respectively. Finally, it drew a conclusion by analyzing the application of translation strategies in Pygmalion. In a word, the adaptation theory plays an important role in translation, and it can provide a new perspective for translation study, and it reflects the great explanatory power of the adaptation theory on the analysis of translation. 

Key words: Pygmalion; adaptation Theory; translation strategies

Contents

Abstract

摘要

1 Introduction-1

1.1 Research Background-1

1.2 Research Purpose-2

1.3 Thesis Structure-2

2 Literature Review-2

2.1 Previous Studies of Translation Strategies of Pygmalion-2

2.2 The Limitations of Previous Translation Theories-3

3 An Introduction to the Theory of Adaptation-4

3.1 Language Use as a Choice-Making Process-4

3.2 Three Properties of Language-4

3.3 Four Angles of Pragmatic Investigation-5

3.4 Contextual Correlates of Adaptability-6

3.5 The Relationship Between the Adaptation Theory and Translation-7

4 The Analysis of Yang’s Translation of Pygmalion-8

4.1 Adaptation to the Mental World-8

4.2. Adaptation to the Social World-12

4.3 Adaptation to the Physical World-14

5 Conclusion-16

References-17