Research On The Translated Version Of Se, Jie From The Perspective Of Gideon Toury’s Translational Norm Theory

This thesis conducts a study on the translated short story Lust, Caution from a descriptive point ofview in an attempt to provide a convincing reference for the applicability of Gideon Toury’s translationalnorm theory to describing translational phenomenon, and to provide some kind of enlightenment for theoutgoing of the Chinese literature.Literary translation is not only code-switching, but also a type of social activity which is closelyrestricted by the target culture and history. Therefore, the study of a translated text at the linguistic level isunlikely to be representative of the general translation phenomenon, since it does not take the multiplesocial and political factors into consideration. However, at present researches on the translated story Lust,Caution from those perspectives are in small quantities and none of studies on this translated version isfrom the perspective of Toury’s norm theory. The thesis attempts to conduct a descriptive study accordingto the three translational norms proposed by Toury on the entire translation process of this translated text,covering the translator’s selection of the original text, the global translation strategy and detailed methodsin translating, thus to carry a more comprehensive analysis.Focusing on the actual translating process, this study carries out a contrastive analysis on thetranslation of Lust, Caution. Firstly, the factors contributing to the selection of the original text are exploredin terms of preliminary norms, and then the overall translation strategy adopted and the reasons for sodoing are detected in terms of initial norms. Finally, the detailed translation methods employed and thereasons for a series of choices are analyzed in terms of operational norms. Based on the analysis, aconclusion can be drawn that although the translated text is produced by the translator who have made aseries of choices during the translating process, those choices are influenced or restricted by the linguisticnorms and the sociocultural norms in the target society at a particular point of time; thus the translated textis definitely a distortion as a result of the collision between two systems of language and culture. This research proves the explanatory force of translational norm theory to the translation phenomenon and whatis more may provide some enlightenment for the outgoing translation of Chinese literature.