A Study Of Chinese Poems In English Rhyme Translated By Ts’ai Ting Kan: From The Perspective Of Translation Norm Theory

Ts’ai Ting Kan, one of the educational mission students during the late Qing Dynasty, was the renowned statesman and diplomat during the early period of the Republic of China. One of his academic works, Chinese Poems in English Rhyme, finished during his later years and published by Chicago University Press in 1932, is the first collection of the English translation of Chinese classical poems completed by native Chinese. This translated work, though, is not the most outstanding one among the numerous English translation works of Chinese classical poems, its significance lies in Ts’ai’s early consciousness to transmit Chinese culture to the outside world independently.The thesis, based upon the translation norm theory proposed by Gideon Toury, endeavors to analyze the characteristics of the translated work and how these norms operate in the actual translation and translating process. According to Toury, translation is a kind of norm-governed activity and the translator will be necessarily influenced and restricted by the social, historical and cultural factors from the selection of text, the overall tendency of translation and the usage of specific translation methods. Toury classified them as the preliminary norm, initial norm and operational norms. First of all, the selection of text reflects the preliminary norm. The choice of Chinese classical poems as the genre of text not only conforms to the social background of the target-language society at that time, but also a reflection of the translation purpose of the translator. Operational norms are manifest from both the form and content of the poetry. It can be found that while striving to save the form of the original text, the translated text mainly follows the norm in the target culture. As for the initial norm, the translated text gives priority to acceptability and the tendency toward the target norms is much more noticeable.The translation activity of Ts’ai Ting Kan took place in a particular environment of history, society and culture. The thesis finds out that it is influenced both by the source culture and target culture norms, of which the latter is more obvious. The exploration of this work under the guidance of translation norm theory will be much more comprehensive and systematic.