A Comparative Study Of Two Chinese Translations Of The Grass Is Singing Using Toury's Norms Theory

In 1972 western scholar James Holmes put forth the term of Descriptive Translation Studies,which broke the previous tradition of taking translation study as a branch of linguistics.Affected by Holmes,Gideon Toury proposed target-language oriented translation value and completed the work Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond,in which he presented the translation norms theory,which further promoted the development of descriptive translation studies.Toury's norms theory includes three aspects: the initial norms,the preliminary norms and the operational norms.The initial norms refer to translators' overall control to the text during their translation.In other words,translators are inclined to the source-language oriented form—“adequate” translation form,or the target-language oriented form—“acceptable” translation form.The preliminary norms mainly include translation policy and the directness of translation.Translation policy refers to some factors that affect translators' translation,whereas the directness of translation refers to the translators' accessibility to the original text.The operational norms include matricial norms and textual-linguistic norms,among which matricial norms refer to the macro factors that affect translators' translation in original text,while the textual-linguistic norms refer to the micro factors that affect translators' translation in original text.When published in 1950,The Grass Is Singing,the first work of Doris Lessing who has won Nobel prize in literature,made a hit.Since it is a novel mainly describing the colonialism,thus in 1956,as an example of anti-colonialism of the Third World Countries,the novel was introduced in China.In the same year,it was translated by Chinese translator Wang Keyi,signing his pen name Wang Lei in the translated version.In 1999,the novel was re-translated by Wang Lei,Wang Keyi's daughter,signing her pen name Yi Lei in the translated version.The thesis studies and compares the two Chinese Versions of The Grass Is Singing from the perspective Toury's norms theory,analyzing and discussing the reasons of the similarities and differences of the two Chinese versions in different times.By comparing,the two Chinese versions are found to have great resemblance in the initial norms and the preliminary norms: in order to make readers understand the contents of the Chinese versions easier and better,the two Chinese translators adopts “target-oriented” translationstrategy,formulating the similarities in the initial norms;owing to the same support of the government and publishers as well as the convenience of accessing to the original novel,there are similarities in the preliminary norms between the two Chinese versions.However,affected by the different times and the subjectivity of the two translators,there are differences in the operational norms between the two Chinese versions: the different ways of translating the poem in the original novel as well as the differences in adding the footnotes in the translation,which formulates the differences in the matricial norms;since they live in different times and are affected by the subjectivity,therefore,both of the two translators adopt different ways to translate the lexicon,sentences and style of the original novel so as to meet the readers' need,which causing the differences in the textual-linguistic norms.In addition,by comparing and analyzing the similarities and differences of the two Chinese versions and the reasons that cause such similarities and differences,the thesis exhaustively analyzes the reasons why the two translators take different translation strategies.Most of all,the thesis,initially combining Toury's norms theory with the two Chinese versions of The Grass Is Singing,offers a new perspective to the study of The Grass Is Singing.