Toury's Translation Norms And Translation Of Jurisprudential Language In The Confucian Analects

Differing from the traditional translation theories which are prescriptive and aiming at the formulation of rules and norms for translation criticism,descriptive translation study makes analyses of translation from a more objective perspective.As a representative,Gideon Toury considers translation as a kind of activity governed by norms and classifies the norms into preliminary,initial and operational norms.Specifically,preliminary norms,made up of translation policy and directness of translation,govern translators to choose source texts before the translating event.Guided by initial norm,translators prefer to the original or the target language system,which affects their translation strategies and adequacy or acceptability of their production.Operational norms consisting of matricial and textual-linguistic norms mainly focus on translators' selection of the translation methods.Since the 16 th century,The Confucian Analects began to be translated into foreign language,and in 1809 the first English version was finished.Considering that there are quite a few researches on different versions of The Confucian Analects with various theories,but only a few with descriptive methodology,the author of this thesis would employ Toury's translation norms to explore the translation of jurisprudential language in The Confucian Analects so as to shed light on the translation of this classical book as well as of the Chinese Classics.The research reveals that among the three translators,James Legge,Ku Hungming and Wu Guozhen attempt to reproduce the original author's meaning,but their versions present different features because of the influence of translation norms.Under the guidance of the preliminary norms and initial norm,the three translators begin their translating activity for different reasons and apply different translation strategies.The operational norms from a micro level affect their dealing with words,phrases and sentences with the translation methods.