A Comparison Of Translational Norms

This thesis is aimed at making a comparison of the translational norms of novel translation by institutional translators and by freelance translators.To make this research more convincing,it selects Gladys Yang's and Jeffrey Kinkley's versions of Biancheng as the studying objects.Gladys Yang's version was firstly published on Chinese Literature in 1962,and later formally published on Panda Books in 1981—two publications for translating and introducing Chinese literature to the world operated by China Foreign Languages Publishing Administration.Jeffrey Kinkley's version was published on HarperCollins Publishers in 2009,mainly led by his personal interests and without much interference of national institutions.By describing the translational norms of Gladys Yang's and Jeffrey Kinkley's translation activities of Biancheng,the translational norms of translation activities under two different modes(one by institutional translators and the other by freelance translators)are also presented.This thesis forms its theoretical framework on the basis of Toury's translational norms,and compares the two English versions of Biancheng and the relevant translation activities from initial norm,preliminary norms and operational norms.On the basis of textual comparison,common characteristics and differences in translational norms of novel translation by institutional translators and by freelance translators are summarized,and reasons are explained.Through analysis,this thesis comes to the following conclusions:1)The common characteristics in novel translation by institutional translators and by freelance translators are presented in the following three aspects:On the aspect of preliminary norms,as for the directness of translation,both translations by institutional translators and by freelance translators are directly translated from the source text to the target text without any mediating languages most of the time.On the aspect of preliminary norms,as for the translation policy,namely factors influencing the selection of texts,both translations by institutional translators and by freelance translators take the literary and aesthetic value of the original text,and the status and literary achievement of the author into consideration.On the aspect of operational norms,in order to promote the communication of Chinese culture,novel translation by institutional translators and by freelance translators usually makes changes on the fullness(such as adding or omitting something)and the location of target texts,and makes some segmentation.2)The differences in novel translation by institutional translators and by freelance translators are presented in the following three aspects:On the aspect of the initial norm,novel translation by institutional translators tends toward the acceptability of the target texts.On the other hand,novel translation by freelance translators can usually ensure the adequacy and the acceptability of the target text at the same time.On the aspect of preliminary norms,as for translation policy,novel translation by institutional translators usually pays more attention to whether the work is suitable for cultural and national communication,while novel translation by freelance translators focuses more on translators' personal interest.On the aspect of operational norms,on the word-level,when it comes to contents related to politics of the feudal society or culture and habits of the old society,institutional translators usually makes greater changes and adopts more omissions to ensure the establishment of a positive image of China,while freelance translators pays less attention to these factors.