Norms And Translation: A Descriptive Study Of Lin Shu's Translations

Lin Shu is one of China's most influential translators. He initiated modern literary translation in China, and his translations imported new ideas, literary concepts, styles and techniques from the West. These, in turn, influenced the emergence and development of modern Chinese literature. However, Lin Shu and his translations have long been belittled and even dismissed for various reasons. The thesis is a descriptive study of Lin Shu's translations through the use of the latest concept of norms hoping to make a fairer judgment.The paper is divided into five chapters.Chapter 1 is an introduction, which explains in brief the dispute over Lin Shu's translations, the purpose for our re-investigation and the theory to be used in our description and explanation.Chapter 2 is a literature review of Lin Shu's translations. Since the day when Lin Shu's first translation appeared, the criticism of Lin Shu and his translations are largely negative, some hold that they aren't faithful, some highlight political issues - his endorsement of the constitutional Qing monarchy and his conservative attitude to the New Culture Movement, for which his translations are also condemned. But adopting the norms concept enables us to bypass these narrow approaches.Chapter 3 focuses on the introduction to the norms concept and tries to build up a framework for discussing Lin Shu's translations. The source-oriented translation theory cannot effectively explain it. Usually, it reveals part of the problems, thus, leading to partial conclusions. The concept of norms is a major tool in descriptive translation studies first proposed by Gideon Toury in his target/culture-oriented translation theories in the 1970s. As norms in nature are descriptive, historical and social rather than examining whether the target text is faithful to the source text, it is very helpful in this study. Combining both Toury and Chesterman's categorization, it will probe into Lin Shu's translations in the following aspects: preliminary norms, initial norms, operational norms, expectancy norms and professional norms. While the first two and last two kinds of norms are on a macro level, operational norms enable a discussion on a micro one.Chapter 4 is devoted to a detailed descriptive analysis of Lin Shu's translations. Informed by the norm concept, it starts to explore preliminary norms and initial norms. Through examining the contemporary historical and social background, Lin Shu's translational activity is properly contextualized and their purpose of importing Western knowledge through fiction translation is obvious. The prevailing concept of free translation at that time aiming at acceptability rather than adequacy determines some of their translational strategies. In the discussion of operational norms, the strategies like omission, addition and alteration are all reasonable. Some are determined by norms of classical writing, some are out of political concern, and some are subject to the regulation of source text norms. Furthermore, using expectancy norms and professional norms, other elements that may be involved in the translational process such as readers" expectancy, integrity and ethic of translators are also brought into our vision.Chapter 5 comes to a conclusion based on the descriptive study in the previous chapter. Using the norms concept, it effectively explains why Lin Shu's translational practice had the form as it was. It conforms to the contemporary translational norms of his time, hence, can be viewed as translation. And in the development of literary translation, Lin Shu's translations form a transition as they maintain some of the old norms and in the meanwhile break some others. It successfully performed its social and historical role in the translation history of China.