A Comparison Of Three English Versions Of The Novel Luotuo Xiangzi Under Toury’s Norms In Descriptive Translation Studies

Since the “cultural” turn took shape in the translation field in the1970s, a largenumber of scholars have turned away from the traditional linguistic angle oftranslation research. Instead, they began to view translation as an activity taking placein a social context. Among them, Israeli translator Gideon Toury outlined Holmes’concept of descriptive translation studies and therefore broadened the scope oftranslation studies. Furthermore Toury proposed a systematic theory of translationnorms which include initial norms, preliminary norms and operational norms. Sincethen this systematic theory has served as a wonderful framework for many translators.With the help of Toury’s norms theory, this paper endeavours to systematicallyshowcase the characteristics of three English versions of the novel Luotuo Xiangzi andat the same time present the underlying reasons. Readers can thereby discern thedifferences of each English translation under the macro initial and preliminary normsand the micro level of specific operational norms. Moreover they can understand thattranslators at different periods of time and with differing national identities, facedwith diverse social and cultural constraints, will naturally come up with disparatetranslations though with the same original novel. By all those analyses, the deepinfluence of the social and cultural factors on a translation can be highly perceptible,and thereby this paper calls for future translators’ attention to both those extra-textualfactors and textual ones.