A Study Of English Translation Of Santi From The Perspective Of Translational Norms

Santi is the first of a trilogy titled Remembrance of Earth Past which is written by Liu Cixin, the most famous science fiction writer in contemporary China. Santi has been Liu's most famous hard science fiction up till now and also most salable and popular science fiction in recent years in China. It was translated by Ken Liu and introduced into the U.S. in 2014 by Tor Books. The English translation is titled The Three-Body Problem, and has become popular among American readers after the publishing. Three-Body Problem has won the 73 rd Hugo Award for Best Novel and it is the first time for Asian science fiction.The English translation of Santi is of significant research value. Therefore this thesis has made a descriptive study on it from the perspective of Gideon Toury's translational norms. It has compared and analyzed the characteristics of the source and target text, investigated the translation strategies chosen by the translator and reconstructed the underlying translational norms he has observed.According to the classification by Toury, the thesis has studied the translation of Santi from the following three aspects: preliminary norms, initial norms and operational norms. The thesis has found that governed by preliminary norms, the selection of Santi conformed to the policy of Chinese government, the attitude of publishing houses both in China and in the U.S. and the expectation of target readers. Governed by initial norms, the translator has balanced the acceptability and adequacy well though he tends to subject himself more to the source text. The thesis has also found the actual decisions made by the translator are also constrained by operational norms. Therefore, the translator has adopted division, addition, rearrangements of paragraphs during translation. Moreover, he has employed different strategies when translating cultural specific words and science fiction coinaged words and expressions.This thesis has also found that the translator has observed the translational norms during the whole translation process. The underlying translational norms have embodied both the source and target social-cultural factors and the success of The Three-Body Problem is attributed to the integration and cooperation of Chinese and western culture and norms.