A Contrastive Study Of Operational Norms In Chinese Translations Of Romeo And Juliet

When translating the same work, different translators tend to have the different versions of translation under the same background of times; even the same translators will have different versions in different periods of life time; facing different readers the translator will also produce different versions. These situations fully show the translator’s subjectivity. Different translators have different life experiences, literary culture, ideology, aesthetic standards, translational ideas, personal environment and so on. As the direct conductor of translation activity, these factors will have influence on translation which cannot be ignored.Romeo and Juliet is one of the most beloved plays of Shakespeare’s from the Elizabethan Age to the present. The thesis selects two famous translators-Zhu Shenghao and Liang Shiqiu to make a contrastive study on their translations of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet based on Toury’s operational norms which guide decision-making during the actual business of translating; Toury distinguishes operational norms into matricial norms and textual-linguistic norms. Matricial norms help determine the macro-structure of the text and govern decisions concerning; textual-linguistic norms affects the text’s micro-level, the detail of sentence construction, word choice, the use of italics or capitals for emphasis, and so on.What the present paper concerns most is not the good or bad translation made in their translation versions, but their decision-making process, by examining the then social, cultural and ideological situation, their purpose of translation, and various restrictions of norms under the framework of Toury’s operational norms. Through the analysis and comparison of differences of two versions, this paper can help readers better understand what factors influence the decision making process of different translators when they translate the same source text, thus gaining a clear perception of the strong relevance between operational norms and translators:operational norms influence the production of translation and constrain the translator’s behavior. Translation is a process of making choices between two sets of norms. Translator’s subjectivity is also an important factor in translational practice.