A Study On Li Jihong's Translation Of A Thousand Splendid Suns From The Perspective Of Toury's Norm Theory

A Thousand Splendid Suns is the second internationally influential work by American writer Khaled Hosseini.This novel attracts and affects readers with its powerful narrative ability,unique social and cultural background,rich story plot as well as plain and exquisite language and emotion.The readers not only show their great sympathy for the two females' tragic fate in the novel,but deeply appreciate their fear and anxiety of living in turbulent times.Li Jihong,a Chinese translator,translates the original novel into Can Lan Qian Yang.The Chinese version of A Thousand Splendid Suns evokes the Chinese readers' resonance and response.Moreover,Chinese readers are also fond of the translation.Scholars at home and abroad have done many researches on the original novel in aspects of the story plot and the author's writing style,but few ones are conducted on the translation from the perspective of Toury's norm theory.In view of this,the author of this thesis chooses the Chinese version as her research object.In the late 1970 s,Gideon Toury developed the polysystem theory which was proposed by Itamar Even-Zohar,and put forward the concept of norm in translation.Gideon Toury indicates that translation is a norm-governed activity.Three norms,namely,preliminary norms,initial norm and operational norms,are involved in Toury's norm theory.Based on the three norms,a descriptive and analytical study is conducted on Li Jihong's translation of A Thousand Splendid Suns.The study is not limited to the discussion about the connection between the source text and the target text but puts more emphasis on the comprehension of the influence exerted by the target language culture upon the activities and products of translation.According to the research,Li Jihong's translation of A Thousand Splendid Suns is thought highly of by Chinese readers.His success owes much to the constraints of language,society and culture which are imposed on the translator at every stage of the translation activities.In the meanwhile,the translator's appropriate adoption of the corresponding strategies and wise choices cannot be forgotten.Chapter one is the introduction part,which mainly introduces research background,research objectives and significance as well as research questions and methodology,and finally gives the structure of the thesis.Chapter two is the literature review,which elaborates previous studies on Toury's norm theory at home and abroad and Chinese translation of A Thousand Splendid Suns.Chapter three is the theoretical framework.It includes descriptive translation studies and Gideon Toury's norm theory.Chapter four is a study on Li Jihong's translation of A Thousand Splendid Suns from the perspective of Toury's norm theory.First,it includes the introduction of A Thousand Splendid Suns and its Chinese version.Second,it is the influence of preliminary norms on Li Jihong's translation of A Thousand Splendid Suns.Translation policy,selection of the source text and directness of translation belong to this part.Third,it is the influence of initial norm on Li Jihong's translation.On the one hand,it contains the cultural background of the novel when Mr.Li chooses to do translation;On the other hand,it is his tendency towards acceptability between “adequacy” and “acceptability”.Last,it is the influence of operational norms on Li Jihong's translation of A Thousand Splendid Suns,including matricial norms and textual-linguistic norms.Chapter five is the conclusion,which makes a summary of the thesis.On the basis of Toury's norm theory,this paper provides a new perspective for Li Jihong's translation of A Thousand Splendid Suns and also offers reference and guidance for the translation practice.