A Case Study Of Zhu Shenghao's Translation Of Romeo And Juliet From The Perspective Of Translational Norm Theory

With the emergance of descriptive translation studies, scholars began to treat translation in an objective and all-round way, but not to be bound by the ideal of "faithfulness" in translation. Since 1970s, the descriptive translational norms study has transcended the limitation of traditional translation standard and broadened the view and research field of translation studies, resulting in the flourishing phenomenon of translation studies. As one of the most important representatives of translation norm theory, Gideon Toury firstly launched the translation studies from the perspective of translational norms and centered his research around the influence of target culture on translation activitis and translation products. Basing on a great deal of case studies, he pointed out clearly that translation was a norm-governed activity and categorized three kinds of norms: preliminary norms, initial norms and operational norms. From the choice of a text to translate, to the translation strategy to adopt before translation, then to the skills used in actual translation process, a translator is without exception influenced and bound by various factors or norms.Admired by scholars in translation field, Zhu Shenghao's translation of Romeo and Juliet has attracted many a reader after its publication. However, there are still criticisms on it. What the present paper concerns most is not the good or bad translation made in Zhu' version, but the translator's decision-making process, by examining the then social, cultural and ideological situation, his purpose of translation, and various restrictions of norms under the framework of Toury's norm theory.There are altogether five parts in this paper. "Introduction" introduces the background, significance and structure of this thesis. Then a review of Shakespearean study at home and abroad, as well as studies on translation of Shakespeare's works in China follows. On the ground of an in-and-abroad norm study, there is a detailed presentation of the definition, classification, nature of norms, added with the employment of norms in translation studies and its possibility and value. In the main body the paper carries out a case study on Zhu Shenghao's translation of Romeo and Juliet from the perspective of preliminary norms, initial norms and operational norms respectively, to discover the various factors that determine Zhu Shenghao's choice of the play and the look of his translation. The last part is a conclusion of the whole thesis, with limitations of the research included.