Selective Adaptation and Adaptive Selection in Translation: Lu Xun's Selection of Source Texts and Translation Strategies in His Translation of Foreign Science Fiction from the Perspective of an Approach to Translation as Adaptation and Selection

An Approach to Translation as Adaptation and Selection aims to interpret translating from the perspective of ecological sociology, highlighting the sociality of translating and the translator's subjectivity. According to An Approach to Translation as Adaptation and Selection, translating is a social activity that the translator is restricted by different ecological environments of translating and meanwhile selectively adapts to the specific ecological environment of translating. The translator should bring the subjective initiative into full play, and according to the given ecological environment of translating the translator selects the proper source texts and the appropriate translation strategies to achieve the adaptive transformation of different dimensions in the target language. This paper, based on An Approach to Translation as Adaptation and Selection, is intended to probe into Lu Xun's translation of foreign science fiction and points out that Lu Xun's selection of the source texts of foreign science fiction was geared to the social context of Chinese "save the nation by science" and his selection of translation strategies achieved the adaptive transformation of different dimensions.