A Comparative Study Of Chinese Versions Of Harry Potter Series From The Perspective Of Chesterman's Translation Norms

This thesis intends to conduct a comparative study of the Chinese versions of Harry Potter series from the perspective of the translation norm theory.The translation norm theory is an important branch of descriptive studies.The founder,Gideon Toury,borrows the concept from social-behaviorism,which breaks the inherent framework of translation studies and puts it into culture and society.In Toury's translation norm theory,there are three types of translation norms: the preliminary norm,the initial norm and the operational norm.Later,Andrew Chesterman offers his own ideas and divides norms into the expectancy norm and the professional norm,while the latter is further divided into the accountability norm,the communication norm and the relation norm.Here,the translation norm theory becomes more detailed and comprehensive.Harry Potter series are welcomed by readers of all ages all over the world.Harry Potter series are translated into 67 languages and sold in over 200 countries.So far,Harry potter series have enjoyed a publication of more than 500,000,000 copies and rank the 3rd place in the world's best seller list,sitting next to the Bible and Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung.All these data show the extraordinary charm of Harry Potter.As a best seller,Harry Potter also has a detached status in literature.More and more researchers and scholars are studying it from their own unique perspectives.To find out the similarities and differences of Chinese versions of Harry Potter from the perspective of Chesterman's translation norm theory is also a try under such trends.Chinese versions grant Chinese people an access to Harry Potter.It's no doubt that the success of Harry Potter in China owes a lot to its translation.Many researchers have conducted researches on Harry Potter,but most of them are done from the perspectives of functional equivalence,skopos theory,reception theory and so on.Those researches are usually based on one book from the series which is too narrow a sample and the coherence among the seven books are neglected.Nowadays,researches from the perspective of translation norms mostly employ Toury's theory as the theoretical framework,but Chesterman's theory is more detailed and comprehensive,and highlights the translator's subjectivity.What's more,translation studies of Harry Potter series from the perspective of Chesterman's translation norm theory have never been tackled before.Under the guidance of Chesterman's translation norm theory,this thesis adopts a descriptive approach to analyze the traditional and simplified Chinese versions of Harry Potter.Counterparts of different versions will be detected to find out the rules hidden in the texts,that is,translation norms,and reasons for such norms will be explained.Different from prescriptive theories,the translation norm theory is a descriptive approach.It is not to construct rules for translators to follow,but to find out the rules hidden in the translation and the reasons for being so.Six chapters constitute this thesis.The first chapter includes the research background,research objectives,research significance,research methodology,and the structure of this thesis.Chapter Two is literature review which reviews previous studies on Harry Potter and the translation norm theory from home to abroad to find the research gap for this thesis.Chapter Three is the theoretical framework where Chesterman's translation norm theory is elaborated.Chapter Four is the comparative analysis that is done at semantic,grammatical/syntactic and pragmatic levels to find out the similarities and differences of the translation strategies adopted in the two versions.And Chapter Five tries to locate the norms hidden in the translation strategies and to sum up the main reasons for such norms.Chapter Six is a conclusion of major findings,implications and limits of this thesis.The findings are as follows: translation norms are dynamic which can be influenced by social and cultural environment.Translation norms exert influences on the whole translation process,including the selection of the source text,text translation and translation assessment.The translation norms of the two Chinese versions have some similarities and differences.Firstly,in terms of the expectancy norm,British and American literature is welcomed.The different part lies in the readerships.The mainland version has general readers(adults and children)as the target readers,thus the translation is more adequate and foreignized to present a faithful translation.The Taiwan version chooses children as its target readers,thus the translation is more acceptable and domesticated to create a vivid and interesting magical world.Secondly,as for the accountability norm,both versions are responsible for all the relevant parties involved.However,the mainland version puts its primal loyalty to the source text,while the Taiwan version puts the primal loyalty to the target readers.Thirdly,regarding the communication norm,both versions seek for the value of understanding,but the ways in doing that are quite different.The mainland version cares more about getting the semantic meaning across with some help of semantic strategies,such as footnotes and abstraction change,while the Taiwan version cares more about the message itself and uses more pragmatic translation strategies,such as cultural filtering and explicitness change.As a complete series of Harry Potter,the consistency and wholeness of the books are also influenced by the communication norm.Fourthly,as for the relation norm,the mainland version is constrained by semantic and form similarity,while the Taiwan version is influenced by style and effect similarity.The innovation of this thesis lies in three aspects.Firstly,the translation norm perspective broadens the scope of Harry Potter studies,and is free from traditional prescriptive approaches.The analysis is based on the translated texts,thus the translator's subjectivity is enhanced.Secondly,the objectives of this thesis conclude seven of the Harry Potter series,which avoids the segmentation of the sample and the coherence within is also considered.Thirdly,a study of the Chinese versions of Harry Potter series from the perspective of Chesterman's translation norm theory has not been done yet,thus this thesis fills the gap,which is also a proof of the feasibility of translation norm theory in explaining the translator's behavior and reader acceptance.