Study On The English Rendition Of Wo De Di Wang Sheng Ya From The Perspective Of Toury's Theory Of Translational Norms

The novel Wo De Di Wang Sheng Ya is one of the representative works written by the contemporary Chinese writer Su Tong.And it is translated by the American sinologist Howard Goldblatt into My Life as Emperor.Since its publication,this English rendition has gained popularity among Western readers and drew the attention of American mainstream media including The New Yorker.At present,few translation studies on it are available and most of them focus on either the translator's role or the transmission of information from the original text to the translated one.But multiple factors,especially those from social and cultural aspects,play an important part in Goldblatt's translating process.Yet,there has been scarcely any detailed discussion of these issues.Hence,an exploration of translation phenomena from a sociocultural perspective can lead to a clearer understanding of this rendition.So in this case,Gideon Toury's theory of translational norms provides a favorable perspective for analysis.In Toury's view,translation is a sociocultural activity restricted by translational norms.All the translator's choices and decisions made before and during his translation are subject to many sociocultural factors.Toury proposes three types of translational norms,namely,preliminary norms,initial norm and operational norms.Preliminary norms refer to macro factors affecting the translator's choice of the source text,which can be further divided into translation policy and directness of translation.As for initial norm,it affects the basic choice made by the translator between the norms of the source language or culture and those of the target language or culture.And it shows the translator's general orientation in translation.Operational norms are subdivided into matricial norms and textual-linguistic norms.They are micro factors governing the overall structure of the translated text and the translator's choice of target-language material.Translational norms run through the whole process of translation,influencing the translator's decision-making at every stage.Therefore,studies on translational norms can interpret the complex translationphenomena.In view of this,this thesis takes descriptive method and qualitative method to analyze the English rendition of Wo De Di Wang Sheng Ya under the framework of Toury's theory of translational norms.It is expected that influences of translational norms on the formation of translation can be explored so as to gain an overall knowledge of translation.To start with,this thesis investigates preliminary norms by analyzing issues like themes of the novel,readers' expectation and Goldblatt's personal preference.All those factors explain his choice of the source text for translation.Besides,it discusses Goldblatt's adoption of direct translation and corresponding reasons.Secondly,it is revealed that Goldblatt's translation stresses acceptability and readability,which means he inclines to conform to the norms of the target language under the restraints of initial norm.His general orientation can be attributed to three factors: the status of the translated Chinese literature,the mainstream translation strategy in the West and Goldblatt's reader-oriented consciousness.Last but not least,this thesis sets out from the text to explore influences of operational norms operating in Goldblatt's translation by analyzing matricial norms and textual-linguistic norms,respectively.As for matricial norms,Goldblatt makes some slight adjustments in his translation such as the addition of footnote and passage as well as textual segmentation.As for textual-linguistic norms,this thesis first conducts research on the lexical items by taking Goldblatt's translation of the emperor's belongings,titles of concubines,names of official positions,of official institutions,of palaces and of characters for analysis.After research,it is found that Goldblatt mainly adopts the domestication strategy with the foreignization strategy as the complementary one to deal with language material.And he flexibly uses translation methods like free translation,literal translation,substitution and transliteration in specific situations in a bid to produce an acceptable rendition and to satisfy readers' psychology for novelty.In addition,Goldblatt adopts the domestication strategy in his translation of sentences based on the syntactic difference between two languages.To be specific,he adds conjunctions to indicatethe logical relation and subjects to highlight the subject-prominent structure,and converts verbs to conform to the stative feature of English sentences.As a whole,Goldblatt's translation of Wo De Di Wang Sheng Ya gains popularity for the corresponding choices he makes under the influences of translational norms through the whole translating process.