| In C-E translation, the original subjects are the preferred candidates for the target subjects. But for the linguistic and cultural differences between Chinese and English, there are other options for acceptable English texts. This thesis, with the introduction of Toury’s descriptive translation studies, and the cases of Hong Lou Meng and its two English versions, is meant to explore translational norms in the English subject selection. In this thesis, both the quantitative and qualitative approaches are adopted. First and foremost, from the analysis of the ST and TTs, this thesis has generalized the strategies adopted by the translators in the English subject selection. Secondly, this thesis made a contrastive study between the two TTs to find the differences and similarities between the two English versions in the English subject selection. Through analyzing the cited examples from the perspective of Toury’s translational norms, this thesis explores the decision making process of the translator which gives an account of the norms of the English subject selection.From the perspective of Toury’s translational norms, based on the analysis of the two versions of Hong Lou Meng, a conclusion is drawn that the English subject selection is affected by the preliminary norms, initial norms and operational norms, which influence the translators’ subject selection at macro and micro levels.The English subject translation governed by initial norms is related to the source norms and target norms. Based on a contrastive analysis of the TTs, this thesis finds that since Yang and Hawkes are with different background of native language, the former tends to subject himself to the norms realized in Chinese (source language), but the later to the norms of English (target language). Therefore, in the subject selection, Yang’s translation is towards the ST norms, then his TT is adequate; Hawkes’s translation is towards the target culture norms, then his TT is acceptable. The English subject selection governed by preliminary norms, to a certain extent, is related to the translation policy, including different social backgrounds, politics, cultural backgrounds and the purpose of translation. From our analysis, it is concluded that under different historical backgrounds and different purposes of translation, different sets of translational norms are applied in the TTs regarding subject selection. In Yang’s version’s version, he tends to keep close to the ST sentence structures and subjects, which reflects that his translation strategies are influenced by his political, historical background and purpose of translation. On the other hand, Hawkes who is relatively free from the political factor and caters to readers’interest tends to reconstruct the ST sentence structures and replace the original subjects more often. Therefore Hawkes’s version is reader-friendly.The English subject selection governed by operational norms is related to matricial norms and textual-linguistic norms realized in English. With respect to information status (related to the textual theme) in matricial norms of English subject, the translator tends to choose the sentence elements in ST with high information status as subjects in the TT. With the respect to the adequacy and grammaticality of English in textual-linguistic norms, the translator tends to reconstruct the sentence in ST, such as, nominalization of Chinese verbs, the explicitness of reference or cohesion devices in Chinese and even the utilization of typical English sentence patterns.All in all, under the operational norms of the information status of English subjects and the adequacy and grammaticality of English, the translation strategies of the English subject selection employed in both versions are generalized as:(a) subject equivalence between ST and TT;(b) subject addition in TT;(c) subject replacement in TT; and (d) subject pruning in TT. Furthermore, in practice of these techniques, the translator may adopt different strategies because of his subjection to the ST norms or TT norms, or even to the different translation purposes. From the contrastive analysis of Yang’s version and Hawkes’s version, it is found that Hawkes subjects more to the English norms so that his version is a reader-friendly translation, while Yang subjects less to the target norms but more to the source norms, which renders his translation an adequate one. The translators’subjections contribute to the different choices of subjects in the two versions. For instance, there are more cases of addition of subjects, pruning of subjects and replacement of subjects in TT in Hawkes’s version than in Yang’s version. |
