An Analysis Of The Translations Of Shanghai Citizen Culture In The Song Of Everlasting Sorrow From The Perspective Of Toury's Translation Norms

Chang Hen Ge is one of the most representative urban theme novels written by Chinese contemporary writer Wang Anyi.Published by the Writer's Publishing House in 1995,it was granted with the fifth Mao Dun Literary Award in 2000.The novel was co-translated by American Sinologists Michael Berry and Susan Chan Egan,and attracted great attention from the American mainstream media and readers after its publication in 2008.The translators try their best to preserve the delicate descriptions of Shanghai citizen culture that reflect the lifestyle and values of Shanghainese in the target text.In view of this,the author chooses the translations of Shanghai citizen culture as research object,and tries to observe the instructive translation ideology through the descriptive translation study of Shanghai citizen culture's translations in the novel.After the cultural turn of translation studies in 1970 s,Gideon Toury proposed a set of Translation Norms Theory on the basis of Poly-system Theory.He advocates that translation studies should start with the cultural environment study of the target-language community,and the analysis of target text can be conducted under the theoretical guidance of norms theory that contains preliminary norms,initial norms and operational norms.And this new theory has provided a new perspective for translation studies.Under the guidance of Toury's translation norms theory,this thesis mainly applies the qualitative methods like document retrieval,textual analysis,sampling survey,and summarization,to the analysis of target text and the summary of translation principles in the translations of Shanghai citizen culture.Therefore,this paper presents two research questions according to above purpose:(1)How would Gideon Toury's norms theory help us analyze the translations of Shanghai citizen culture in The Song of Everlasting Sorrow?(2)What kinds of translation principles by the translators can be elicited from the translations of Shanghai citizen culture in The Song of Everlasting Sorrow? It is found that:(1)in the preliminary stage of translation,the translators' choice of Chang Hen Ge is largely affected by the translation policy,including the social environment in their language community,the influences of publishing house,chief editor and translators' individual interests,etc.;in the logically dominant initial phase,the translators prefer to apply adequacy as guiding translation orientation;consequently,adequacy also happens in the operational stage of translation: the English version of Chang Hen Ge is an unabridged translation work;translation methods like transliteration,transliteration plus explanation,literal translation,and literal translation plus explanation are applied to translating textual-linguistic features so as to best preserve the Shanghai citizen culture in the original.(2)The translators mainly apply “faithfulness” principle to the translations of Shanghai citizen culture in the novel.Transliterations are frequently applied to translating some names of characters and places,adding exoticism to the target text.Some supportive explanations are added to avoid culture loss caused by transliteration and literal translation,so as to maintain and transfer the spirit original text.Through the descriptive translation study of Shanghai citizen culture in the novel,this thesis attempts to make some supplements for the existing research results of the English version of Chang Hen Ge from a new perspective,and to obtain a more comprehensive review of its translation process,which may be helpful for the similar urban theme novels' translation in the future.