A Comparative Study On Two Chinese Versions Of Lolita From The Perspective Of Toury's Translation Norm Theory

Lolita is a representative of Russian-American writer Vladimir Nabokov.In the “Top 100 English Novels of the 20 th Century” list in 1998,Lolita ranked fourth so its influence was evident.The novel mainly narrates the abnormal love between a middle-aged European man Humbert and his American step-daughter Lolita.Untill now there are 25 different Chinese translation versions of Lolita in China.However,the researches on the Chinese vertions of Lolita mainly focus on linguistics and literary aspects,and the perspective of translation studies is not diversified.The thesis takes Huang Jianren's 1989 version and Zhu Wan's 2005 version of Lolita as the objects of study,applies Gideon Toury's Translation Norm Theory as the theoretical basis,incorporates the political and sociocultural factors into the scope of the study,and compares the two Chinese vertions in detail from three different perspectives: the preliminary norms,the initial norms and the operational norms.First,the thesis analyzes the influencial factors such as political background and sociocultural differences on translators before the translation activity occurs.Second,the thesis focuses on the influences of the two inclinations of adequacy and acceptability made by translators when they encounter two different cultures.Finally,the thesis analyzes the different translation methods adopted by the two translators through the comparative analysis,the thesis attempts to solve the following three research questions.First,why do the two translators choose to translate Lolita? Second,what translation methods are adopted by Huang Jianren and Zhu Wan respectively during the translation process ? Third,how does the Translation Norm Theory affect the specific choices of the two translators in the translation process?The purpose of the thesis' s comparative analysis is not to evaluate the quality of a Chinese translation vertion,but to reveal the fact that the Translation Norm Theory has a non-negligible influence on the translator's choices during the translation process.Under the dual influences of the norms from the source and the target text,the translators constantly make choices and ultimately achieve the desired translation results.