| Translation activity in the western world can be traced back to 2,000 years ago. Translation Studies is a branch of development of translation history. Translation Studies has experienced a long history of development. From the very beginning, scholars and translators argued about"word-for-word"translation and"sense-for-sense"translation, and then a famous scholar Eugene A. Nida ended the debate by his famous theory"equivalence'. In the 1950s and 1960s, inspired by the emerging Cultural Studies, some western scholars have forged a new approach in translation studies, namely, a Descriptive Translation Studies since the 1950s with their representative achievements of the Polysystem in the late 1970s-1980s and Levefere's rewriting theory in the 1990s. This approach studies translation as a cultural activity under the background of its social environment, thus fundamentally renewing our concept of translation. With its contribution to the great expansion in this field, the descriptive paradigm has become the mainstream in Western translation studies. It is also the fundamental theory of"cultural turn"of Translation Studies.In this thesis, the author does the research on the English versions of four Tang tales collected in Owen's book An Anthology of Chinese Literature:Beginnings to 1911 with the approaches to Descriptive Translation Studies. The author compares the segments of source text and target text from a micro-level. At the same time, the author compares Stephen Owen's version and Xian and Glades Yang's version from a macro-level. All these comparisons employ theories and approaches of descriptive translation studies. On the basis of all these comparisons, we can find out the norms and laws behind Owen's translation process and productions. With Lefevere's theory of"rewriting", we can have a further study on the possible factors including patronage, poetics and ideology which have profound impact on Owen's translation process and productions.Stephen Owen (1946—), a famous American sinologist, translator and scholar, is a professor of comparative literature. Now,he is teaching at Comparative Literature Department of Harvard University. Stephen Owen is entitled as the James Bryant Conant lecture professor. He is one of the very few scholars in the USA specializing in sinology who gain this honor.Stephen Owen concentrates on the studies of Chinese classical literature, especially on the literature of Tang Dynasty. Stephen Owen is also an excellent and outstanding translator. He translates a large number of works of Chinese classical literature. All of his translations are collected in the book An Anthology of Chinese Literature:Beginnings to 1911 published by W.W.NORTON Company. Professor Owen's outstanding contribution is that he has put the Chinese classical literature to the equal position with the Western canons for the first time. This book becomes the authoritative book for scholars who specialize in Chinese literature, and also it is the textbook in Chinese department of most western universities. Stephen Owen translates almost all the works personally, including poems, proses, Chinese classical literary theory, Tang tales, letters and so on.Professor Owen's translated versions of Tang tales are concise and faithful to the original texts, but the style is flexible and novel. It is not only suitable for the scholars to read but also for the ordinary readers. Furthermore, Professor Owen's translation activities have much more important significance. It is a great help for the spreading of Chinese traditional culture in the western world and the cross- cultural communication between China and western countries.
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