An Analysis Of Howard Goldblatt’s Translation Of Hulanhe Zhuan (Tales Of Hulan River) From The Perspective Of Toury’s Norm Theory

Translating has a long history which can be traced back to at least2000years ago,and researchers have done lots of studies in the field since the second half of twentiethcentury. However, previous translation studies are mainly carried out in a prescriptiveway, which are concerned with formulating certain rules or guidelines for thecriticism of translation. In the1970s, the western scholars in translation studies putforth the descriptive approaches, which aim to describe, analyze and explaintranslation phenomena objectively instead of valuing translation products subjectivelywith existing rules or conventions. Gideon Toury is one of the pioneering scholars thathave contributed to Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS). He has promoted the studyof translation norms by dividing translation norms into three categories: preliminarynorms, initial norms and operational norms (Toury,2001:120). Preliminary normsincluding translation policy and the directness of translation can help reveal thefactors constraining the translator before the translating process. Initial norms refer tothe overall choice on the inclination to source culture norms and target culture norms.Operational norms including matricial norms and textual-linguistic norms can beregarded as the micro factors affecting the translation process.(Munday,2001:114)This thesis takes a descriptive approach to analyze the translation of HulanheZhuan (Tales of Hulan River) from Toury’s norm theory. From the perspective ofGideon Toury’s translation norm theory, this thesis is intended to explore HowardGoldblatt’s English translation of Hulanhe Zhuan (Tales of Hulan River). HulanheZhuan (Tales of Hulan River) is a novel written by a Chinese writer Xiao Hong. It hasbeen translated into English by Howard Goldblatt. Taking Howard Goldblatt’stranslation of Hulanhe Zhuan (Tales of Hulan River) as an example, this paperdescribes some translation phenomena and analyses how the translation phenomenahave been influenced by translation norms so as to provide a way to view the wholeprocess of translation as well as translation related activities. Through the analysis, thereconstruction of translation norms is completed, revealing the factors behind the decision-making process. There come the following conclusions: the selection ofsource text and the directness of translation are influenced by the translator’s identityand the social cultural environment which construct preliminary norms; the overallchoice of acceptability is influenced by the social cultural environment and reader’sexpectancy which construct the initial norm of ‘acceptability’; matricial phenomenasuch as restructuring short paragraphs and adding titles to each chapter are influencedby reader’s expectancy which construct matricial norms. Translation strategiesincluding in-text connotation for culture-loaded words and choice of present tense torepresent literary style are influenced by the translator’s identity and reader’sexpectancy which construct textual-linguistic norms. Based on the case study ofHoward Goldblatt’s translation of Hulanhe Zhuan (Tales of Hulan River) fromToury’s norm theory, this thesis finds that factors including social culturalenvironment, the translator’s identity and reader’s expectancy have given acomprehensive explanation of this translation product. In this way, the author of thisthesis hopes that this research can provide a new perspective to study the translationof Hulanhe Zhuan (Tales of Hulan River) and can help to predict the factors whichgovern translators’ decision if translation will be done in the similar circumstance asHoward Goldblatt’s translation.