On Chinese Indirect Translation In The New Period(1978-) From The Perspective Of Translation Norm Theory

In the 1980s,Gideon Toury,a representative of descriptive translation scholars,put forward the translation norms theory through a large number of case studies.This theory emphasizes on reconstructing the translation norms,which govern translators'translation activities,through describing translated text and the paratext,and to find out the existing problems to guide further translation practice.Toury holds that translation is a norm-goveroed cultural activity,which is embodied in the presumption that translators are influenced by the target culture in terms of initial Norm,preliminary norms and operational norms.Andrew Chesterman emphasizes the ethical norm,also known as accountability norm,on the basis of operational nonns proposed by Gideon Toury.With the combination of these two translation norm theories,this thesis is going to conduct a more comprehensive descriptive study of indirect translation in the New Period of China.The history of Chinese indirect translation practice dates back to Zhou Dynasty(BC 1046-256).Although direct translation has gradually become prevalent since the May Fourth New Literature Period,it has not completely replaced indirect translation.And it has been proved that direct translation alone cannot meet the explosively ascending language service needs,and indirect translation plays an important complementary role in today's translation practice.Through literature retrieval in CNKI,twenty-five Chinese articles related to indirect translation have been found,80%of which focus on the indirect translation from the late Qing Dynasty to the founding of the People' Republic of China in 1949,while little attention has been paid to the practice of indirect translation in the New Period of China.The author collects forty-two indirect translations of Meditations published in the mainland China in the New Period as the research objects,takes Toury and Chesterman's translation norm theories as the theoretical framework,employs the qualitative and quantitative research methods to describe the translation texts and activities in the New Period of China,and analyzes and reconstructs the translation norms governing the practice of indirect translation in the New Period.The main results are as follows:1)In terms of initial norm,Chinese translators mainly adopt source-text-oriented translation strategies.2)In terms of preliminary norms,Chinese translators mainly translate world classics with English as intermediary language.3)In terms of operational norms,the proportion of translators following the ethical/accountability norm is relatively low;the indirect translations are dominated by complete-translated versions,but the paratext information are often deleted;the quality of the translated text is mainly affected by the translator's translation comprehension ability,the translator's stylistic preference and the information bias of the intermediary text,among which the translator's comprehension ability and the information bias of the intermediary text are the dominant factors.Through the case study of forty-two indirect translations of Meditations,this thesis put forward the following suggestions for the practice of indirect translation:Due to the normative pressures of translation norms shaped under the influence of established sociocultural context,translators tend to adopt source-text-oriented translation strategies,so the acceptability of the target text is reduced;therefore,translators should balance the adequacy and acceptability of the target text.At the same time,translators should properly improve the compliance of ethical norm and give information about the source text and ultimate source text in order to facilitate the protection of copyright and the development of indirect translation studies.In the process of indirect translation,both text and paratext elements should be taken into account so that the target text can reflect the information of intermediary text as faithully as possible.In addition,translators should select as many intermediary texts as possible to minimize information bias.