A Comparative Study Of Three Chinese Versions Of The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd From The Perspective Of Chesterman’s Translation Norms

Since its introduction to China in the late Qing dynasty and early Republic period, western detective novels are widely welcomed by Chinese. Among those novelists, Agatha Christie is known as the Queen of Crime. Her works have enjoyed great reputation and are quite popular, thus influencing and enlightening the development of the detective novels both in Britain and even other countries. Being quite productive, Agatha Christie wrote a lot of outstanding novels, among which The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is one of her representative novels. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was first translated into China in the early Republic period, and has had 22 translated versions so far. Detective novels are regarded to entertain readers in China. It is not until recent years that some researches of the translated works begin, and the study of her works are mainly focused on the review of works and the literary value instead of the translation.The scholars of Translation Studies School mainly study the cultural background of the translated text, and the impact of the translated text on the cultural norms of the target text culture. Among which Toury, Hermans and Chesterman are the representatives who discuss theory of translation norms. Based on the former studies, Chesterman put forward his own translation norms theory, which improves and deepens the theory. Chesterman discusses expectancy norms in terms of social historical condition, and considers the expectancy norms to be dynamic. Readers in different times expect differently from the translated versionsThis paper chooses three translated versions of different times and different cultural backgrounds and analyze them from the perspective of Chesterman’s translation norms. The conclusions are:1) The translators abide by the translation norms during their translation actions. There are many factors that influence the translation, such as the predominant translation tradition, ideological factors, target readers’expectations, etc., so different translators must take these factors into consideration and may give priority to certain factors based on the actual situation. Therefore, it is up to the translators that they conform to the translation norms in different ways.2) After analyzing the three Chinese versions of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, it is clear that foreign literary works, no matter what kind it is, need re-translating. The new version will not deny the old ones, but it is more acceptable by the readers in the new time.