A Comparative Study On Translation Differences In 1984

In the 80 s of the 20 th century, Gideon Toury, an Israeli translation scholar, put forward the theory of translational norms, which includes preliminary norms, initial norms, and operational norms. These three types of norms influence the production of translation on different levels. Preliminary norms and initial norms influence the production of translation on the macro level, while operational norms form the micro-level influence. So far this theory was applied on comparative studies of translation of many novels, in order to find differences of translation and translators. However, there is no attention from the perspective of translational norms on 1984, which is a classic novel with enormous influences in the literary world written by George Orwell and translated separately by Dong Leshan and Sun Zhongxu. Thus this paper starts from Toury’s translational norms, compares and studies two Chinese versions of 1984 at both the macro level and the micro level, probes into reasons of translation differences, and analyzes influences of translational norms on novel translation from selecting source text to choosing translation strategies, and to adopting concrete translation skills. The result implies that different translational norms lead to different translation productions, proves the reasonability of studying novel translation from the perspective of translational norms and to contribute to the translation of similar types of novels in the future.