A Study on Two English Translations of Rickshaw Boy from the Perspective of Eco-translatology

Abstract

Eco-translatology views translation as the translator’s adaptive selection in the ecological environment. It emphasizes adaptive choices across linguistic, cultural, and communicative dimensions to achieve overall harmony. Rickshaw Boy, a landmark of Chinese realist fiction, has four English translations to date. From an eco-translatological perspective, this study examines the two versions by Goldblatt and Shi Xiaojing, comparing how the translators make adaptive selections and transformations in the three dimensions to recreate the source text’s linguistic features and cultural connotations, with the aim of offering practical insights for literary translators.