A Comparative Study Of Two English Translations Of Travels To The West Of Qiu Changchun From The Perspective Of Norms

The travel literature Travels to the West of Qiu Changchun is a primary source for studying early Mongol history.It is also very important in studying the development of Taoism in medieval China and Genghis Khan’s westward expedition.Its two English translations respectively rendered by Arthur Waley(1889.08),an outstanding British Sinologist,and Emil Bretschneider(1833.07),a distinguished Russian Sinologist,have great influence in the overseas studies of Mongol history.However,the research achievements on the English translation studies are rather limited now.Further research on the translation history is needed in the future.This study selects two English translations of Travels to the West of Qiu Changchun as the core research objects,namely The Travels of an Alchemist: The Journey of the Taoist Ch’ang Ch’un from China to the Hindukush at the Summons of Chingiz Khan(1931)and Medieval Researches from Eastern Asiatic Sources(1888).Based on two translators’ achievements of Sinology and translations,the study is aimed to make an in-depth comparison and analysis on the English translations from the micro linguistic level to the macro social and historical perspective through a descriptive and explanatory approach.The study uses translation norms proposed by Toury as a tool of theoretical framework.Based on a close reading and the examination of the translation process and paratexts,the English translations and characteristics of Travels to the West of Qiu Changchun are analyzed,the important factors influencing the translators’ translation process are clarified,and the differences between two English versions are explored to get a new understanding of the translators’ translation thoughts and strategies.The research findings are generally as follows.Firstly,from the perspective of preliminary norms,two translators’ cultural backgrounds,academic preferences,and the publishing requirements of the editors affect their selections for the source text and directness of translation.Secondly,from the perspective of initial norms,Waley’s version is oriented towards ordinary English readers and mainly follows the norms of the target language,and thus he tends to make an acceptable translation.Bretschneider’s version mainly follows the norms of the source language by employing the strategy of thick translation and adding a large number of footnotes full of cultural connotations.So he tends to make an adequate translation.Thirdly,from the perspective of matricial norms,both two translators make some adaptations like additions and omissions,which destroy the completeness of the original work.Fourthly,from the perspective of textual-linguistic norms,for the translation of culture-loaded words,both two translators adopt the translation strategy of transliteration plus annotation,literal translation and free translation to varying degrees;at the syntactic and text level,Bretschneider adopts corresponding and reproduces the historical context of the source language;in translating poetry,Waley adopts prose translation method to reproduce the images of the poems,and creates a unique “sprung rhythm” in the way that English stresses correspond to Chinese characters to maintain the rhythm in the original poems.