Study On Lin Yutang's Translation Of Six Chapters Of A Floating Life From The Perspective Of Translation Norms

Lin Yutang, as a famous writer and translator, has been well-known for his works like My Country and My People and Moments in Peking and Chinese-English translations like Six Chapters of a Floating Life. This thesis attempts to explore the translation norms that condition the translation of Six Chapters of a Floating Life from the perspective of Toury's translation norm theory.Set in the background of"Cultural Turn"of translation, translated text is taken as study target. The social and cultural factors conditioning the translation are focused on by translation scholars. Translation, as a social and cultural action, is conditioned by the social and cultural norms. Translator employs the norms in the source and target society during the process of translation. The norms are called translation norms. According to the translation norms of Toury, initial norms consist of adequacy and acceptability. Adequacy means that during the process of translation, the translator tries to follow the norms in the source society and keeps the characteristics of the source text by employing the approach of foreignization in order to introduce the source culture to the target society. Acceptability means that during the process of translation, the translator tries to follow the social and cultural norms in the target society and employs the approach of domestication in order to make the translated text more smooth and acceptable by the target readers. Adequacy and acceptability are complementary and can not be separated from each other.Many studies on Six Chapters of a Floating Life are made from the linguistic and aesthetic perspectives which focus on the word and sentence translation. However, limited studies concern on the social and cultural factors which condition the translation. This thesis studies the adequacy and acceptability in the translation of Six Chapters of a Floating Life by analyzing the social background, the ideology, the translation theory of the translator, the intention of the translator and the translation's status in the poly-system. Contrary to the previous studies of Six Chapters of a Floating Life, which were conducted from the perspective of the source text, leading to the narrow critical approach of correspondence, this thesis takes target-oriented study into account, adopts descriptive approach and explores the norms in both of the original and target societies.The conclusion of this thesis is: by the translation norm theory, it is found that the translation of Six Chapters of a Floating Life is a result of a combination of adequacy and acceptability which are conditioned by many factors. This research may be helpful to further the researches on Lin Yutang's translation of Six Chapters of a Floating Life from the perspective of translation norms in the source and target societies and hopefully it may be helpful to further the researches on Lin Yutang's other translation experience.