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

The 1980 s witnessed the descriptive translation study research paradigm came into being with cultural turn of translation study, which broke through the traditional way of studying translated version from linguistic perspective and provided a new perspective for translation study. The thesis makes a con trastive study of two Chinese versions of American classics The Call of the Wild from preliminary norms and operational norms based on Toury’s translational norms theory to explore social factors resulting in differences in the two versions and trace changes of prevailing norms from the 1930 s to the late 1990 s, so as to provide a reference to construction of Chinese translation theory.Toury thinks preliminary norms govern translator’s decision on the choice of source text and operational norms direct translator’s actual decisions in handling the source text from macro structure and te xtual-linguistic aspect. Considering the sequence of analysis, the author discusses the choice of source text by the translator from preliminary norms in a contrastive way. After analysis, the author finds that the choice of the source tex t in the 1930 s is constrained from advocacy of realistic literature in the target culture at war time to stimulate the masses’ fighting spirit for national survival; the choice of source text in the late 1990 s focuses on the literariness and aestheticism of the original that have a positive impact on enriching Chinese literature and improving the readers’ appreciation of literary works. Then a contrastive analysis is made to discuss differences in handling the linguistic features. The version in the 1930 s is conveyed in simple and smooth language and it inclines to treat the culture-loaded words with free translation; the one in the late 1990 s uses four-character phrases to express the orig inal, and literal tran slation is employed when dealing with culturally-loaded words. In short, special treatment of the source text by translator at particular time is a result of multi-factors in the receiving culture.