A Comparative Study On Two Translations Of Hong Lou Meng From The Perspective Of Toury’s Translation Norms

Hong Lou Meng is one of the best novels in China. In the 185-year history of English translation of Hong Lou Meng, there are ten versions in total. Hawkes’s version and Yang Xianyi’s version are excellent ones. There are many descriptive researches on the two. But few of these researches are conducted from the perspective of Toury’s translation norms. This research, therefore, intends to study the two versions from this perspective.James S. Holmes firstly put forward the term of "Descriptive Translation Studies(DTS)". Based on previous propositions, Toury mostly developed DTS by proposing a four-step method to describe translations and claiming that the purpose of DTS is to discover and summarize general norms active in translation. Toury explained why to study norms in DTS and defined the concept of norm. He also put forward three types of translation norms and provided two sources to study them which are textual sources and extratextual sources. The major part of this thesis is to conduct a comparative study on the two complete translations of Hong Lou Meng by examining their respective sources to discover the norms active in the two translations(process and product). A conclusive description of the two translations is provided at the end of the thesis and the summary of norms active in the two translations is the main point that enriches previous descriptive studies on the two translations.The findings of this study are as follows:1) Both of the two translations are accepted as translated works in the target culture while Hawkes’s version appears to be more popular; 2) Hawkes’s purpose was to tell such a story that the target readers can enjoy as much as possible while Yang’s purpose was to reproduce the original novel in the language of English.3) The two translators used different strategies and complied with different norms in their respective context.