A Study On Translation Norm Of Japanese Literature

Translation is not only the change between two languages, but also is influenced by society,culture,ideology and other factors. So, this thesis attempts to use Toury’s Descriptive Translation Study to study the translation norm of the mainland Yu Lei’ version published in 1993 and Taiwan Zhao Huijin’s version published in 1995 of I am a Cat which were both published in 1990s. By analyzing the two versions of I am a Cat from the new perspective of translation norm, this thesis can provide a new translation case study for the translation of Japanese literature, at the same time, the comparative analysis will help readers to select versions.This thesis is based on previous studies. Firstly, there are mang papers about the application of translation norm theory in previous achievements,these papers studied the translation norm of Chinses translation version of English works or English translation version of Chinese works.These case studies are of great significance to the study on translation norm of Japanese literature. Secondly, the previous translation studies of I am a Cat focus on the language level, especially the discussion on the translation methods and skills, and translation versions focus on the mainland version.This paper uses comparative analysis method and descriptive research method, focus on studying translation norm of two versions, and analying the reasons for differences in the translation norm.This thesis is divided into four chapters.Chapter 1 introduces Toury’s Descriptive Translation Study and the concept of translation norm.Chapter 2 explains reasons why I selected the two versions and examines translators and translation background of the two versions.Chapter 3 conducts a comparative study on preliminary norm, initial norm and operational norm of the two versions,and puts emphasis on analying initial norm from the language, culture, special expression.Chapter 4 analyzes the reasons which caused the differences from translators,social background and language factor.Toury’s translation norm theory includes preliminary norm, initial norm and operational norm.Preliminary norm is the macro element that affects the translators before the translation starts;Initial norm refers to the macro choice made by the translator him/herself,determines whether the translation is source-norm oriented or target-norm oriented;Operational norm refers to the micro choice made by the translator him/herself,includes micro factors such as textual-linguistic norm.For the translation of linguistic categories of English,Chinese character vocabularies and idioms, in Yu Lei’s version,English words are translated into Chinese, the Chinese character vocabularies are translated into established vocabularies in target language,idioms are translated into similar expression in target language.But in Zhao Huijin’s version,English words are retained,Chinese character vocabularies are directly borrowed into target language,idioms are translated according to the form of idioms.For the translation of cultural categories,Yu Lei didn’t rigidly adhere to the form of the original, tried to translate into expressions which are easily accepted by mainland readers,but Zhao Huijin tried word-for-word translations and retained the heterogeneous culture contained in the original.For the translation of puns and such special expression category, Yu Lei’s version tried to maximize the possibility of Pinyin, and convey the meaning implied in special expression skills to readers through Pinyin skills, but Zhao Huijin’s version translated according to the form of the original text.Through this thesis the following can be confirmed:Yu Lei’s version tends to target text’s norm,but Zhao Huijin’s version shows a tendency close to source text’s norm. There are a lot of annotations focussed on the borrowing words from Japanese in Zhao Huijin’s version,which offers another confirmation of the fact that Zhao Huijin’s version tends to source text’s norm.The difference in translation norm of the two versions can be known from the translator, social background and language. Yu Lei is also engaged in a lot of creative work apart from translation,in the 1980s and 1990s when he translated and published the novel,economic growth in Chinese mainland accelerated, more attention is paid to readers,and modern Chinese has fully matured and stereotyped,Japanese sentences have been rare;But Japan implemented colonial rule for 50 years in Taiwan,Taiwan has high acceptance of Japanese.The phenomenon that introduced a large number of Japanese loanwords appeared in Taiwan in 1990s.This thesis is not intended to evaluate which Chinese version is better, but to analyze the differences between the two versions, and try to find out the causes.I hope this thesis is benefit to the research of Japanese literary translation and cross-strait exchanges in Japanese literary translation.