On Xia Ji-an's Translation Of A Collection Of American Essays From The Perspective Of Chesterman's Norm Theory

Xia Ji-an is a famous literary critic and translator.His translation of A Collection of American Essays,with terse,delicate and elegant language,is popular in Hongkong and Taiwan.Through a great number of researches and studies,we can find that there exists many researchers about Xia Ji-an's translation of A Collection of American Essays.However,many of them focus on the language level.And others mainly study the translation from the perspective of aesthetics since the original text's type is prose.Few studies of Xia Ji-an's translation of A Collection of American Essays are in the framework of Polysystem Theory.According to the Polysystem Theory,translation as one of the sub-systems of target language culture,must be confined to the norms of the target language culture,social conventions and aesthetic standards,which affects the translator's actual option during the translation process.Therefore,through the description of the translation process and the analysis of translations in different periods,the scholars find out the various factors that affect the translator's actual choice in the translation process,so as to control the series of norms created from the translation.Chesterman has added the concept of strategy between norms and behaviors,and translation has developed into a strategic behavior under the constraints of norms.Under the guidance of Chesterman's Norm Theory,this thesis with Xia Ji-an's translation A Collection of American Essays as its research object conducts an analysis that whether Xia conforms to the norms from the aspect of expectancy norms and profession norms.Translation is an activity which is constrained by norms and translators.Through the analysis,we concludes that Xia conforms to translation norms consciously or unconsciously during the process of translation.Additionally,according to Chesterman's translation strategies,the author of this thesis discusses Xia Ji-an's main translation strategies at the level of phonetic,lexical,syntactic,rhetoric and image levels etc.Finally,this paper can concluded that Xia Jian's translation generally conforms to the translation norms,and employs many translation strategies at all levels of language.This thesis aims to provide a brand-new perspective of Chesterman's Norm Theory for the research of Xia Ji-an's translation of A Collection of American Essays,which is a meaningful attempt.Meanwhile,it is hoped that this thesis can arouse researchers' interest in Xia Ji-an's translation.