A Comparative Study Of Two Chinese Versions Of The Call Of The Wild From The Perspective Of Toury’s Theory Of Translational Norms

The Call of the Wild is a classical work written by Jack London who is an outstanding American writer of realism. Its publication also lays the foundation of London’s position in American literature, There have been more than 40 Chinese versions of The Call of the Wild since it was firstly translated into Chinese in 1919. However, the studies of its Chinese translations are few in the domestic academia. Hence, based on Toury’s theory of translational norms, the thesis attempts to make a comparative study of the two Chinese versions of The Call of the Wild translated by Liu Dajie and Sun Fali respectively.Toury put forward the theory of translational norms in 1980s on the basis of his numerous case studies. His theory builds a multidimensional framework for translation study. Meanwhile, it also greatly promotes the cultural turn of translation study. He adopts a descriptive method rather than a prescriptive one to describe and explain translational phenomena, which provides a new perspective and has a great significance for the establishment of translatology. His translational norms are divided into three types which are preliminary norms, initial norms and operational norms. The first two types make a difference on translators’ preparations from a macroscopic view, while the last one influences the process of translation at the micro level. Preliminary norms determine the whole choices of translation logically. That is, a translation is inclined to norms of a source language culture or a target language culture. Initial norms include translation policy and directness of translation. Operational norms are constituted by matrical norms and textual-linguistic norms.Having analyzed the translational norms reflect in the two Chinese translations of The Call of the Wild and how translational norms impact in the process of translation, the thesis finds that translators are influenced by both the norms of source language culture and target language culture in the process of translation. Meanwhile, diverse norms play a different role in various stages of translation. Due to translators’different choices of source language texts, linguistic styles of translations and translation skills, readers can read and appreciate diverse translations ultimately.The thesis tries to provide a new angle for the study of Chinese translations of The Call of the Wild. It makes a comparison and analysis of many concrete examples chosen from the two Chinese versions, which aims at deepening people’s understanding of Toury’s theory of translational norms. Moreover, it also testifies the rationality and explanatory power of the theory.