Norm-governed Activity

Based on Gideon Toury's concept of norms and Itamar Even-Zohar's Polysystem theory, the thesis is going to examine the translation process from the perspective of descriptive approach and to find out the relationship between fiction translation and the various socio-cultural elements.The research will be carried out by means of case study. Two Chinese versions of the novel Gone with the Wind-one translated by Fu Donghua in 1940 and the other by Li Yeguang and his collaborates in 1990- will be discussed in the thesis. Then, why was the novel chosen to be (re)translated? Are the translation strategies resorted to by the translators different from each other? Why was the novel first translated in this way and later in another? In order to find out the answers, the two translated texts will be compared and the socio-cultural contexts into which they were translated will be analyzed.The research indicates that the whole translation process from the selection of the source texts to be translated to the actual adoption of translation strategies is actually controlled by the various time-bound socio-cultural factors. These factors are just what Toury defines as 'norms'. Translation actually is a norm-governed activity.