A Study On Goldblatt's Wolf Totem From The Perspective Of Toury's Translation Norms

This thesis plans to dig out the norms of Goldblatt's English translation Wolf Totem from the perspective of Toury's theory of Norms. In the 1970s, the Polysystem Translation School emerged as an influential force and Gideon Toury is one of the most prominent figures in this field. He advocated a theory system in the 1980s that the translation studies be viewed in social, historical and cultural context. Even more, he advanced "norm" from a prescriptive concept into a descriptive one, which favored people with the possibility of understanding translation in a relative way. Therefore, the purpose of the thesis is not to find or lay down a prescriptive rule for universal application, but to enrich the existing research results regarding the translation of Chinese bestseller of Lang Tuteng from a descriptive perspective. That is to say, this thesis can help us further testify and facilitate Toury's translation norms.The thesis tries to study Goldblatt's English translation Wolf Totem from a comprehensive, objective, historical, social and cultural perspective. It is not only the linguistic constraints but also the extratextual factors such as the cultural background and ideology that regulate the bilingual transforming activity. Therefore, the thesis attempts to explore the translation norms behind it from the social, historical and cultural aspects. With a detailed analysis of various translation strategies applied, this thesis reveals the influence of norms on the translating and translation products. Goldblatt, influenced by both the source and the target cultures in this translation, has to make a balance and compromise between them, so as to achieve approved translation effects.The thesis has collected some papers regarding Toury's translation norms, and found that most of them were just limited to investigating and comparing the retranslation phenomenon under the model of Toury's translation norms. Herein, through the application of Toury's translation norms, the paper studies Goldblatt's English translation of Chinese bestseller Wolf Totem, in a hope to provide a new perspective for this western theory.