Study On Xu Yuanchong’s C-E Translation Of Shi Jing From The Perspective Of Theory Of Toury’s Translation Norms

Shi Jing is the first collection of classical Chinese poetry,which contains the essence of traditional Chinese culture.More than ten kinds of English versions of Shi Jing have been published up till now.Mr.Xu Yuanchong,as China’s most influential translator in the world,has published more than sixty English and French works besides his Book of Poetry.He has won the “Aurora Borealis” Prize for Outstanding Translation of Fiction Literature.This award is one of the highest awards in the international translation field.Theory of Translation Norms was proposed by Israeli translator Gideon Toury in the 1980 s.As the most important representative of descriptive translation studies,Toury first systematically studies translation activities from the perspective of descriptive translation based on Even Zohar’s Polysystem Theory and James Holmes’ s research results of descriptive translation studies.He points out that translation is governed by norms,and puts forward three kinds of translation norms: preliminary norms,initial norms and operational norms.Preliminary norms refer to the translator’s choice of the text,which determines the translator’s “translation”,including two factors of the policy and directness of translation;initial norms refer to the translator’s choice of translation strategy in the process of translation,which determines how the translator will translate,and includes two influencing factors of the adequacy and acceptability;operational norms refer to specific translation skills,which includes translators’ arrangement of the textual structure of the translated text and the translators’ choice of materials of the target language.Based on Gideon Toury’s Translation Norms,the process of Mr.Xu Yuanchong’s translation of Shi Jing can be found as follows: Firstly,the choice of text in the stage of preliminary norms is influenced by cultural,political or other invisible translation policies,so Mr.Xu Yuanchong chose the most representative book Shi Jing in order to promote the transmission of traditional Chinese culture.Secondly,as to the choice of translation strategies in the stage of initial norms,for the purpose of spreading Chinese culture Mr.Xu Yuanchong tends to adopt domestication strategy for the acceptability of translation;meanwhile,he adopts foreignization strategy to preserve the essence of Chinese culture.Finally,in the stage of operational norms,Mr.Xu Yuanchong uses literal translation,liberal translation,annotation and other skills in the aspect of construction of theme,use of rhyme,transmission of image and solution of semantic ambiguity to translate Shi Jing in order to better spread the unique characteristics of Chinese culture embedded in Shi Jing to the English readers.