A Study Of Goldblatt’s English Version Of Wolf Totem From The Perspective Of Toury’s Theory Of Translation Norms

The novel LangTuteng describes the interrelationships between humans and the animals. It was translated by the American translator Howard Goldblatt, which was worth detailed analysis. The thesis aims to apply Toury’s translation norm theory to the case study of Wolf Totem, the English version of Lang Tuteng, from perspective of social, historical and cultural factors. By making a comprehensively objective analysis of Wolf Totem, the thesis will dig out the norms manifested in the translation by Howard Goldblatt and discuss the applicability of Toury’s translation norm theory.Toury proposes that any kind of translation activity, more or less, will be influenced by norms, such as the selection of translation materials, the overall orientation of the translator before translating, and the actual translation strategies during the translation process. Thus, on base of numerous case studies, Toury proposes and distinguishes three different kinds of translation norms: the preliminary norms, the initial norms and the operational norms. The preliminary norms can be subdivided into the translation policy and the directness of translation. Likewise, the operational norms comprises of matricial norms and textual-linguistic norms. The preliminary norms will function before the start of translation activity: translation policy will determine the selection the source text and the directness of translation will concern whether the translation from the source text to the target text needs the participation of a third language or not. The initial norms will affect the translator’s overall orientation, either towards the source language or the target language. If the translator tends to conform to the norms originating from the source language, then the translation will be characterized as an adequate translation. If the translator tends to subject to the norms prevailing in the target language, then the translation will be called an acceptable translation. The operational norms will determine the translation strategies employed during the actual process of translation activity.By applying Toury’s translation norm theory to Lang Tuteng, the author systematically analyzes factors that affect the selection of source text, the translator’s overall orientation and the actual translation strategies. And the findings come to the fact that Godlabtt is affected through the whole translation process.The following are the findings: In terms of preliminary norms, Goldblatt chose Lang Tuteng to translate because of the historical background, the ideology and the translator’s preference. In terms of initial norms, Goldblatt tended to be orientated towards the target culture because of the social mainstream in translation. In terms of operational norms, Goldblatt mainly utilized domestication, with foreignization being the supplement. To make the translation more easily understood, reconstruction and division of paragraph, and omission are adopted. On one hand, the translation’s readability is improved; on the other hand, the original flavor of the source language is preserved as well.