On Science Fiction Translation In Late Qing Dynasty From Perspective Of Toury’s Translation Norms

Science fiction, formerly called scientific romance, or science fantasy, is a distinctgenre of literature imported from the Western countries and came into being in the LateQing Dynasty(1872-1911) as a means of national salvation and mass education. From1900to1911, the translated science fiction, outnumbering the created ones, made astrong impact on the domestic science fiction creation. This thesis attempts toinvestigate the translation norms of science fiction translations in the late Qing Dynastyin the light of Toury’s translation norm theory. Based on Toury’s translation norm theory,the thesis attempts to explore the social-cultural factors that governed the translationactivity macroscopically and investigate the operational norms followed by thetranslators at each stage of translation process microscopically.Besides Introduction and Conclusion, this thesis consists of three chapters. ChapterOne is the literature review on the fiction translation studies in the Late Qing Dynastyand the translation studies of science fiction both at home and abroad; Chapter Twogives a general overview of Toury’s norm theory, constituting the theoretical foundation;Chapter Three is the main body, studying the translation of science fiction in the LateQing Dynasty on the basis of Toury’s norm theory.Through the investigation of the preliminary norms, the thesis finds out that thechoices made by the science fiction translators were mostly restricted by the targetculture norms. It is the actual need in the target culture that determines whether or not aforeign science fiction will be translated in the Late Qing Dynasty. The intrinsic valueor the artistic side of the text seems to be of little significance. Besides, through theinvestigation of the directness of translation, the present author finds that nearly onefourth of the108science fiction translations were translated through the medium ofJapanese versions because of the translators’ eagerness to learn from the Japanesesuccess and the language affinity of both Chinese and Japanese languages. Thereforetranslated science fictions with the Japanese language as the medium dominate in thescience fiction translation. Then, on the basis of initial norm, the thesis makes adiscussion on the translators’ decision whether to adopt an “adequate” translation or to employ an “acceptable” translation. For the purpose of minimizing the foreignness oftarget texts, translators tended to choose a way of free translation and adaptation.Therefore, science fiction translation in the Late Qing Dynasty was characterized by thetendency of acceptability over adequacy. Finally, it studies and reconstructs theoperational norms in the concrete process of science fiction translation with specificexamples from the following two aspects: the manipulation of the contents, and themanipulation of the form. In terms of the contents, translators made deletions, additionsand alterations to the original at will, and it was also common for the translators to makecomments wherever they felt necessary, some were even rewriting in the process offiction translation. As for the form, firstly, some science fiction translators in the LateQing Dynasty usually changed the narrative mode of the original into a traditional thirdperson narrator or an omniscient point of view according to the reading habit of theChinese readers and adopt the Chinese Zhanghui Style. Secondly, classical Chinese wasstill dominantly adopted by most science fiction translators. However, with the birth ofthe vernacular Chinese, the language adopted by the some science fiction translatorswere a combination of the classical and vernacular Chinese which retained somefeatures of classical Chinese but much simpler and freer in vocabulary and sentencestructure.