A Report On The Translation Of The Story Of China From The Perspective Of Toury's Norms Theory

As an increasing number of foreign documentaries are being introduced into China,documentary text translation begins to arouse public attention and has gradually become a significant field of translation study.However,it should be noticed that the translations of documentary text vary in quality and the related researches do not amount to much.Hence,documentary text translation has not received its deserved concern in translation studies.Therefore,this thesis selects E-C translation of The Story of China,a BBC documentary,as the case for analysis.With a detailed analysis of various translation strategies adopted by the translator from the perspective of Gideon Toury‘s three translation norms,this thesis intends to discuss the applicability of Toury‘s translation norms in documentary text translation in the hope of pointing out the prospect of documentary text translation.Moreover,through the translation of The Story of China,contributions can be made in recognizing Chinese history from the viewpoint of the West and enhancing the sense of identity and self-confidence of Chinese culture.The practice-based research has led the author to find that norm theory can serve well as the guidance for the practice and analysis of documentary text translation and to a large extent,complies with the acceptability norm of the target language readers,but it is by no means an easy job to achieve that.Firstly,the translator has to take into full consideration various linguistic,cultural and political factors in and outside the source text in the pre-translation stage to establish translation approach and translation norm,namely target language culture-oriented acceptability.Secondly,to ensure the readability of documentary text,several translation techniques such as addition,omission,four-character phrase employment,proverb use,shift of perspective,and restructuring should mainly be applied in specific rendering.What‘s more,the thesis carries out a comparative analysis with commentary on typically readable translations in the hope of providing some enlightening ideas concerning documentary text translation.