A Study Of Han Shant’s Poems Translated By Snyder: From The Perspective Of Ranslation Norm Theory

Translation Studies in western world，since1970s, have turned an age ofprescriptive studies into a new age of descriptive studies, which put translation in amacro context of culture, history and society. Thanks to its introduction, the chains ofthe traditional studies are broken and the fields of translation studies are largelywidened. Gideon Toury, an outstanding scholar of Israel, is an importantrepresentative of translation norms, who explicitly argued that the translator couldnever escape the confinement and manipulation of the social and cultural factors, atthe stage of either selecting what work, or adopting what translation strategies orwhat methods in the process of specific translating.Han Shan’s poems, a treasure of the traditional Chinese poems, have beenexerting a positive and profound impact on a great many countries. These poems,since1950s, have been rendered by European and American scholars now and then.However, among these renderings, what stands out must be the version by Snyder,which won the greatest popularity. Based upon the translation norm theory proposedby Gideon Toury, this paper analyzes Snyder’s translation of Han Shan’s Poems,trying to find out why his translation could win such a great popularity and how thesenorms operate in the actual translation and translating.This paper consists of three chapters. In Chapter One, the author gives a briefliterature review of the life of Han Shan as well as his poems, Snyder as well as histranslating Han Shan’s poems, and the studies of Han Shan’s poems and Snyder’stranslation about it both at home and abroad. In Chapter Two, the author elaboratestranslation norm theory from the perspective of the concepts of norms in traditionalstudies, Toury’s translation norms and his contribution to the translation studies. InChapter Three, this paper describes how the norms operate in the process oftranslating Han Shan’s poems and elaborates how the preliminary norms, initialnorms and operational norms affect the translator’s selection of source text and hisadoption of translation strategies respectively.