A Comparative Study Of Two Chinese Versions Of Treasure Island From The Perspective Of Toury's Translation Norms

Treasure Island is the English novelist Robert Stevenson's masterpiece.And it is the most popular novel among the author's entire literary heritage.There are more than fifty Chinese versions since the first Chinese version was published in 1880 s.This novel is often regarded as the children's literature;thus,many translations are provided for the children.As a result,few researchers have done analyses and researches on this novel and its translations in the past.Following the basic line of the Translation Studies School that was created by Holmes,Gideon Toury did many Descriptive Translation Studies(DTS).He proposed the famous translation norms after exploring the influence of social and cultural elements on translators.And Toury divides the translation norms into three levels: “preliminary norms”,“initial norms”and “operational norms”.Besides,he believes that the translation norms exist in and guide the whole process of translation.Toury advocates explaining the translation phenomenon that appears in the translation by using the translation norms,not evaluate the quality of the translation.This paper,by adopting Toury's translation norms,conducts a descriptive,analytical and comparative study of two Chinese versions of Treasure Island in different periods.One version was translated by Xi Shizhi and published in 1934;the other version was translated by Rong Rude and published in 1980.Both versions are reprinted for many times with scarcely changing in the reprinting versions in contents.Thus,they have certain research value.And these two versions were published in different historical periods so that both of them rotted in different social and cultural background.Starting with the researching of macro aspects,including historical background and social culture environments,then,the author would make a detailed analyze on the micro aspects of these two translation versions,such as translation strategy and language features.Then it is expected to explore the reasons of leading to unique language characteristics in different versions,which can provide evidences forexplaining the effects of social and cultural environment on translator's behaviors.Eventually,it aims to show that the translation norms of each period can manipulate and restrict translator's behaviors and try to reconstruct the translation norms that followed by these two translators.In the end,after comprehensive analysis,the author finds that the translation norms have exerted enormous effects on the translation process,including the choosing of source text,the selection of overall translation strategy and language using.Besides,this research mainly focuses on explaining the reasons of different language phenomenon,is not to evaluate the translation of these two versions.It aims to provide a new perspective for the research of this novel.