A Study Of Julia Lovell's Translator Behavior In Her Translation Of A Dictionary Of Maqiao By Reference To The Norms In Sinologists' Translation Of Chinese Contemporary Fiction

This thesis studies Julia Lovell's translator behavior in translating A Dictionary of Maqiao,and the relations between that and the translation norms among sinologists for rendering Chinese contemporary fiction into English.As a social activity,translation is bound to be affected by the norms of a certain translator circle.Drawing strongly upon Toury's theory of translation norms,this study adopts documentary method,text analysis,comparative research and other methods to identify the translation norms of the sinologist translator community,analyze Lovell's translator behavior,and eventually examine the relations between Lovell's translator behavior and the translation norms.By collecting,arranging and analyzing materials like sinologists' translations,the paratexts in these translations,their academic works and interviews concerning translation,and book reviews and relevant studies on their translations,this thesis describes the norms of the sinologist translator circle for the translation of Chinese contemporary fiction.For the preliminary norms,sinologists usually choose those to-be-translated texts based primarily on personal interest and on market needs;they tend to attach informative paratexts to the translation so as to help the target readers enjoy the book more easily and make present the text.For the initial norms,although sinologists are generally faithful to the original,their faithfulness is rather incomplete as they often decide to be faithful only to the meaning of the original,and adopt methods like equivalent substitution and paraphrasing to reduce the heterogeneity of the translation,showing a preference for “acceptable translation”.As for the operational norms,sinologists tend to adopt methods and techniques like using italics,equivalent substitution,literal translation and adding explanatory notes in the text to avoid footnotes.Through close reading and comparative research,this thesis analyzes Lovell's translator behavior in rendering A Dictionary of Maqiao.As for her preliminary translator behavior,Lovell selected the book mainly out of personal literary appreciation,although perhaps also for the potential success of the translation whose original work is typical of the Root-seeking Literature.For the initial behavior,the translator employed an overall strategy of “faithful recreation”,that is,although Lovell was faithful to the original,she frequently altered its form and contents without changing its meaning,inclining towards the target language norms.As to the operational behavior,Lovell availed herself of methods like substitution,paraphrasing,addition,omission,literal translation,transliteration and adding explanatory notes in the text.She did not use any footnotes but used signs like italics,parentheses and square brackets to highlight special information.Despite a little difference in the selection of the work,a considerable similarity is found between Lovell's translator behavior in translating the fiction and sinologist translators' norms for rendering Chinese contemporary fiction.Based on the fact that sinologist translators practice translation in the same or highly similar environment and there is communication and cooperation concerning translation among them,and the conjecture that Lovell,as one who specialized in Chinese literature,should have read plenty sinologist translations of Chinese fiction before the translation,this thesis argues that such a similarity can be attributed to the overall influence of sinologists' translation norms on Lovell's translator behavior.Due to time and space limitations,this study did not take a further step to explain sinologists' translation norms and translator behavior by examining more of their translations and by resettling them into the historical,social and literary contexts of their translation activities.However,the translation norms of the sinologist circle and Lovell's translator behavior identified by this research can serve well to enhance our understanding of the translation activities of the sinologist translator group as a whole,and shed new light on the current dissemination of Chinese literature in terms of work selection and translation strategy.