Font Size: a A A

A Study Of Chinese Translation Of The Woman Warrior From Translation Norms Perspective

Posted on:2017-03-12Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:X HeFull Text:PDF
GTID:2295330482973073Subject:English Language and Literature
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
Considered as a landmark in the history of Chinese American Literature, Maxine Hong Kingston’s maiden work The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of A Childhood Among Ghosts has attracted a great attention both at home and abroad. Upon its first publication in 1976 in America, considerable researches concerning its cultural identity, cultural images, female rights and so on have been conducted from various perspectives. However, compared with its deep and thorough investigations on the English version, the examinations on the Chinese version are relatively lagging behind, especially the studies from the angle of Gideon Toury’s translation norms.Taking The Woman Warrior as the studying object, this thesis first reviews the previous studies on The Woman Warrior and its Chinese version. Adopting Toury’s translation norms theory as its theoretical framework, the present author gives a general overview of translation norms theory by focusing on the initial norm, preliminary norm and operational norm.Based on Toury’s translation norms theory, the present author makes an analysis of the Chinese version of The Woman Warrior. Firstly, it briefly introduces this work and its Chinese version. Then, this thesis makes a discussion about the effect made by political, economic, cultural and other external social factors upon the translators’ selection of the text and conformity to the norms of the target culture. Following that, it expounds the preliminary norms embodied in the Chinese translation of The Woman Warrior by probing into the translation policy reflected in the Chinese version and the directness of the translation of the Chinese version of The Woman Warrior. Lastly, the present author elaborates on the operational norms reflected in the Chinese version of The Woman Warrior at the internal textual-linguistic level.Through a detailed study of the Chinese translation of The Woman Warrior, this thesis finds out that in the process of translation activity, or rather, before the translation activity begins, some external social factors have exerted an influence on the translators. Therefore, we need to go beyond the simple relationship between the source text and the target text, and take external social-cultural elements into consideration so as to build a more objective and powerful research pattern. Only in this way can we come to know the influence made by social norms upon the translators during the translation process by means of discussing both the internal textual-linguistic context itself and the external social cultural elements.
Keywords/Search Tags:translation norms theory, The Woman Warrior, Chinese translation
PDF Full Text Request
Related items