Norms In Poetic Translation

The theory of translational norms is of great importance in descriptive translation studies, for translation is known to be a norm-governed activity. The choice of translational strategies is confined to many factors, such as textual types, the translator's aims, target readers'expectation and translational norms. Toury was one of the pioneers in studying the theory of translational norms, and he distinguished three kinds of translational norms:the initial norms, the preliminary norms, and the operational norms.Shakespeare's masterpiece, King Lear, known as a dramatic poetry, is highly valued and translated into many languages. Since Lin Shu's introduction of King Lear into China in 1904, the Chinese translation of this great work has never ceased. However, it was from Sun Dayu (1905-1997)'s translation that the true features of King Lear were first shown. In the recent years, although the importance of Sun's translational thoughts and practice are widely acknowledged, researches on his achievements, especially on the norms he adopted in his translation still have much to be desired in both depth and width. The aim of this paper is to present Toury's theory on translational norms, and to illustrate the initial norms, preliminary norms and operational norms adopted by Sun, and thus to explain that the norms abided by the translator not only inherited the traditional norms, but also broke the traditional ones and set new ones.This paper consists of three parts. The first part introduces the background, motivation, scope, methodology, and expected significance of the research project. The second part consists of four chapters—Chapter 1 explains the concept of norms, and illustrates Toury's theory of translational norms. Toury divides the norms in translation into three kinds: the initial norms, the preliminary norms, and the operational norms. Chapter 2 examines Sun's preliminary norms in his Chinese translation of King Lear. Before he started translating King Lear, Sun was influenced by the ideological and socio-cultural features of the target text, and chose to translate the book from the source language English directly. Chapter 3 illustrates Sun's initial norms. Sun chose to follow the norms of the foreign work and adopted the adequacy strategy in both form and content, but sometimes, he would shift from the source norms to the target norms for the acceptability of the translation. Chapter 4 explores the operational norms Sun adopts. The last part is the conclusion of the paper which presents the significances and shortcomings of the paper.