The Translation Norms Behind Arthur Waley’s Translation The Analects

Arthur Waley’s The Analects has attracted much attention since 1938 and has sold well up to now.There are many researches on it from scholars at home and abroad,however,it is still shorten of studies combined with Andrew Chesterman’s Translation Norm Theory.Although the theory was built up in the late 1990 s,it creatively imports the concept of meme,which can make translation research integrated rather than isolated and which is a good way to explore the cultural information and translator’s initiative behind the translation.In view of this,the thesis takes Arthur Waley’s The Analects as core research object and compares it with James Legge’s,Ku Hong-Ming’s and D.C.Lau’s version.By combining with Andrew Chesterman’s Translation Norm Theory,it mainly does qualitative analysis and also adds quantitative research in the part of lingual expectancy norm by using the corpus tool WordSmith,of which the three items “average word length” “type/token ratio” and “standardized type/token ratio” are used to strengthen the explanatory power of Andrew Chesterman’s Translation Norm Theory.The research has found that Waley’s version is basically in line with the current norms.On the one hand,it has an apparently concise modern style by filling with diversely small words,phrases and free rhythm in the level of language and has a tendency toward Eastern culture by preserving cultural items and characters in the level of culture,which conform to the current expectancy norm.On the other hand,it occupies a fairly high accountability,communication and suitability because firstly it is loyal to the source text by making his own argument and mimicking ancient Chinese grammar as well as loyal to his identity of the Other and the current market demands;secondly,it tries to strengthen communicational effect by translating along with explanations when referring to cultural terms while importing concise poetics when referring to non-cultural sentence;and thirdly it creates an appropriate similarity in style between the source text and the target text by preserving the mark of colon,lessening the usage of full stop,enriching the usage of verbs and using verbal expressions,all of which accord with the current professional norm.Therefore,Waley’s version is,to a large degree,consistent with the current translation norms and is branded with meme of that age,whic h not merely transmits Eastern culture but also balances readability.