A Study On Translation Norms In Anna Holmwood’s A Hero Born From The Perspective Of Toury’s Translation Norms

In the recent two decades,more and more Chinese martial arts novels have been translated into English.Louis Cha is one of the most famous authors of Chinese martial arts novels,and his masterpiece,Legends of the Condor Heroes,is being translated by Anna Holmwood,whose first volume,A Hero Born,was published in 2018 with success.Therefore,the translation of A Hero Born is worthy of studying.This thesis,guided by translation norms put forward by Gideon Toury,explores the translation norms influencing Anna’s A Hero Born,with the methods of contrastive study,quantitative research,and qualitative research.The thesis draws the following conclusions.First,from initial norms,influenced more by target culture norms,A Hero Born tends to be an acceptable English version.Second,from translation policy in preliminary norms,Anna’s choice to translate A Hero Born is influenced by two factors,namely,high market demand for Chinese martial arts novels,and publishers’ preference for Louis Cha’s works in the English-speaking world.Third,from operational norms,matricial norms and textual-linguistic norms guide translators’ decisions.The matricial norms govern translators’ macro-level decisions on the fullness,segmentation and distribution of the target text.In A Hero Born,they govern the omission of paragraphs,addition of notes,division of paragraphs,and relocation of paragraphs;the textual-linguistic norms regulate translators’ micro-level decisions about the verbal formulation and textual make-up.In A Hero Born,they govern the word choice and sentence construction of cultural-specific items,including proverbs and poems.