Study On Ku Hung-Ming's C-E Translation From The Perspective Of Toury's Translation Norm Theory

Compiled by his disciples, Lun Yu recorded the sayings and deeds of the great sage and his disciples. It is terse, comprehensive, rich and profound. Its thought later became the major classic of Confucianism as well as the most authoritative book in Chinese history, and it also influenced other nations to a great degree. From the 16th century, Lun Yu was continuously translated into foreign languages by many scholars at home and abroad. But Ku Hung-ming's English version The Discourses and Sayings of Confucius, published in 1898, was much more popular with western readers. Based on Gideon Toury's translation norm theory, the paper analyses Ku's translation of Lun Yu systematically to find out the reason why Ku's translation is well accepted by the target readers and how the translation norms are embodied and operated in the process of translating or in the translations. Through the detailed analysis of Ku Hung-ming's C-E translation of Lun Yu, including Ku's selection of translation text, adaptation of translation strategy as well as his dealing with the linguistic realization and textual organization, the author concludes that in order to successfully introduce the text of a weak culture into a strong culture and let the translation text be well-accepted by target readers, the selection of text is rather critical. The text selected by the translator should both accord with the various norms of the target culture and meet the psychological needs of the target readers. Moreover, the translation should be target culture oriented and the translator should adopt domestication as his main strategy. Only in this way, can the translation text find its way into the existed norm system of the target culture and be accepted by target readers.This paper includes four chapters together apart from introduction and conclusion. The first chapter briefly introduces three different approaches in the study of translation norms as well as the relationship between translation norms and Descriptive Translation Studies; the second chapter mainly demonstrates Toury's translation norm theory by introducing his definition and classification of translation norms, and his contribution to translation studies as well; the following chapter analyses Ku Hung-ming's C-E translation Lun Yu from the perspective of Toury's translation norms; and the last chapter, under the guidance of Toury's translation norms, mainly talks about the methods used by the translator in the translating of Lun Yu.