On Evan King’’s And Shi Xiaojing’’s Two English Versions Of Luotuo Xiangzi A Perspective Of Toury’’s Norm Theory

In 1970 s, the “cultural turn” occurred in western translation studies, and translation studies turned from the prescriptive approach to the descriptive approach. Israel scholar Gideon Toury by observing and taking part in the translation activities, proposes the “norm theory” for translation studies, including the preliminary norms, initial norms and operational norms, which has made great contribution to the development of the Descriptive Translation Studies(DTS) and thus provided a new angle for translation studies.Based on Gideon Toury’s “norm theory”, with the methods of description, comparison, and analysis, this thesis compares the differences of the two English versions of Luotuo Xiangzi respectively by Evan King and Shi Xiao-jing. This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter one introduction gives a general introduction of research backgrounds, research significance, research questions and objectives, research methodology and data collection and the whole structure of this thesis. Chapter Two the literature review, briefly reviews the researches have done on the norm theory both at home and abroad and the researches on the English translations of the novel Luotuo Xiangzi. Chapter Three is the theoretical foundation, which mainly introduces Gideon Toury’s norm theory and the theory’s formation. Chapter Four is the main part of this thesis, which compares the two English versions of Luotuo Xiangzi under Toury’s translation norms. Under the preliminary norms, the two translators select the same novel, Lao She’s Luotuo Xiangzi, as their source texts. Yet, due to the influence of different factors, they adopted different strategies in their translations. And Evan King’s translation is more acceptable, while Shi Xiao-jing’s version is more adequate. Chapter Five is the conclusion. By the analysis above, it concluded that the different translation phenomena of the two English versions was due to that the translators are from different countries, at different times, and they are under the influence of different social, historical, political and cultural norms.By the comparison of the different phenomena in the two translations, this thesis from the cultural view, reconstructs the norms behind the translation phenomena and calls for the following translators to pay more attention to those extra-textual factors and not merely to focus on the textual elements. Besides, it is hoped that this paper could from the perspective of Tour’s norm theory provide some inspiration and insight for the following practice and research in the Modern novels’ translation.