A Study Of The Four Versions Of Dances With Wolves From The Perspective Of Toury's Translational Norms

Translational norms is an important part of translation studies. By the application of and the description to translation norms, the approach intends to provide a way to construct the theoretical system of translation studies and to guide the whole process of translation as well as translation related activities. The study of translational norms has greatly widened the theoretical scope of translation studies. Gideon Toury promotes and contributes a lot to the study of translational norms. Based on a great deal of case study, Gideon Toury's theory was formulated in 1980s and constructed a multi-dimensional framework for translation studies. He divides the translational norms into three categories: initial norms, preliminary norms and operational norms. Initial norms refer to the overall choice on the inclination to the source cultural norms or the target cultural norms. Preliminary norms including translation policy and the directness of translation are the macro factors constraining the translator before the translating behaviour. While operational norms, including matricial norms and textual-linguistic norms, can be regarded as the micro ones affecting the translation of the source text.This thesis is a case study of four Chinese translations of Dances With Wolves from the perspective of Gideon Toury's translational norms, which are Wen Chu'an and Xie Xianning's version published in 1991, Chen Gang, Xiao Yongchun, Gao Fengfeng, Lin Dongwei's version in 1991, Zhong Yuanzhao and Zhong Kun'an's version in 1992 and Zhu Ren's version in 1992. The purpose is to find out how translation is influenced by translational norms and how the translators may react to different translational norms. The literature review introduces the original author and his works, discusses the research on the Chinese versions of Dances With Wolves. Chapter three compares the differences among the four versions from the perspective of translational norms in various aspects, including the syntax, the choice of words and the translation of culturally-loaded words. Generally speaking, Zhong Yuanzhao, Zhong Kun'an and Zhu Ren adopt the source norms system while Chen Gang abides by the target norms system. As for Wen Chu'an and Xie Xianning, they don't belong to the either of the translational norms above. They translate the texts freely aiming at convey the main meaning. Then, in Chapter Four I explore the reasons behind all these differences, which include those having to do with culture, society, and translational norms'instability and diversity, as well as the translator's subjectivities.With the introduction and the application of Toury's translational norms, we can launch the translation studies from a new perspective, deepen our understanding to the nature of translation and analyze the translation activity, and can testify the rationality and explanatory capability of the theory of translational norms.