A Study On The Two Chinese Versions Of The Scarlet Letter From The Perspective Of Tourys Translational Norms Theory

Traditional translation studies always focus on the source text and formal equivalence in translation, which attempt to set a series of prescriptive rules to regulate translators. With the trend of "cultural turn" of translation in the1980s, Gideon Toury, one of the representative Polysystem translation theorists, put forth a new perspective for translation studies:the theory of translational norms. Through a great deal of case studies, Toury attempts to find out the translational norms that influence the whole translation process. Putting translation in a social-contextualized background, Toury claims that translation is a norm-governed activity. By adhering to norms at a certain period of time, different translators would produce different translated versions of the same source text.As a world-renowned romantic novel, The Scarlet Letter has received a lot of attention in China since its appearance of the first translation version in1934. Then, more and more Chinese translators have been attracted by the rich imagination, unique writing skills, and abstruse theme of the novel and many translation versions have come out. Among these Chinese versions, Han Shiheng’s version published in1945and Yao Naiqiang’s version published in1998are the most popular versions in China and respectively reflect different translational norms of different time period. Through analyzing the two versions mainly from the perspective of Toury’s translational norms, the thesis aims to explore what kinds of elements in the source norms and target norms affect the two translators in the translation process and how the translational norms influence their translation process in terms of micro and macro levels.Based on the previous analysis, a conclusion is educed that different set of translational norms under different historical background adopted by the two translators result in the production of different translated works, which are showed at the aspects of the fullness of translation, translation strategy and translation style. At the same time, the two versions reflect the full respect of translators for the target-culture norms in order to be well accepted by readers. Thus, it can be seen that Toury’s Translational Norms Theory can not only offer a chance to study the translation activities of translators in certain historical background but also provide a new perspective to understand the influences on the translator and translation production which are imposed by the social-cultural factors.The thesis is composed of five parts.The beginning of the thesis gives a brief introduction to the research background, research purpose, research questions and research significance.The first chapter is the literature review. The author looks back the previous studies of the Chinese versions of The Scarlet Letter from Hermeneutic view, Feminist View and other views. What’s more, this chapter summarizes the limitations of previous studies and emphasizes the necessity of the study.Chapter two is the theoretical framework. It briefly reviews the development of descriptive translation studies. Above all, it especially introduces Toury’s translational norms theory with focus on the definition of norms and the classification of three kinds of norms, namely, initial norms, preliminary norms and operational norms.The detailed analysis of two Chinese versions of The Scarlet Letter is made in the third chapter. Under the framework of Toury’s translational norms, this chapter attempts to reconstruct the norms that affect the different translation result of Han and Yao and research the influence of different norms on the translation process.Based on the previous analysis, the fourth chapter summarizes the similarity and differences between Han Shiheng’s and Yao Naiqiang’s versions under the influence of translational norms. Their similar characteristic is discussed in terms of the respect for target-culture norms. The different features are illustrated mainly from the fullness of translation, translation strategy and translation style of the two versions.The last chapter is conclusion, illustrating the significant findings, limitations and implications of this study. Through this study, the thesis is hoped to provide references for the translation study of The Scarlet Letter.