On The English Translation Of Xi Jinping:The Governance Of China(Second Volume) From The Perspective Of Toury’s Norm Theory

In recent years,China has sought to construct its own discourse system for international communication and engaged in having a bigger say on the international stage by telling the true stories of China and making its voice heard.Against this backdrop,the translation of political texts is of considerable significance since it is helpful for the international community to better comprehend China’s development.In November 2017,the book Xi Jinping: The Governance of China(Second Volume)and its English version received widespread attention as soon as it went public.It is the best reading material for the world to catch a glimpse of contemporary China.The notion of norms is an important concept in translation studies.Gideon Toury is believed to be the first pursuer who systematically studies the concept of norms in a translational approach.In Toury’s opinion,translation is a norm-governed activity and norms are essential in the act and the event of translating.He probes into the nature,classification,feature,and reconstruction of norms.In particular,he distinguishes three types of norms: initial norm,preliminary norms and operational norms,which reflect general values shared by a community.They govern the translation strategies,and translators’ decisions are actually choices of norms.In view of this,the present study takes the English translation of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China(Second Volume)as the research object,aiming to observe and reconstruct the translational norms in it,and analyze the factors that govern translators’ decision-making.In particular,the specific questions that drive this research are: 1.What are the characteristics of the translational norms implied in the English translation of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China(Second Volume)? 2.What are the factors that govern translators’ decision-making in the process of translation? To answer these questions,this thesis zooms in on the translational norms in the English translation of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China(Second Volume)from the perspective of Toury’s norm theory.The major findings are: 1.In initial norm,due to the joint efforts of the characteristics of the original text,the socio-historic background,and the readers’ acceptance,translators tend to strike a balance between adequacy and acceptability as much as possible.2.In preliminary norms,the translation policy and the directness of translation are governed by the characteristics of the original text and the readers’ expectancy.3.In operational norms,matricial phenomena include the completeness of textual materials,segmentation of long paragraphs and addition of translators’ notes,whereas textual-linguistic norms are reflected on translation strategies,including simplification,literal translation,literal translation with additional notes,interpretative translation,frequent use of short sentences,readjustment of word order and information restructuring,etc.Factors behind these phenomena and strategies are closely related to the characteristics of the original text and the readers’ acceptance.Under the framework of Toury’s norm theory,the study provides a new perspective for the English translation of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China,with a hope to provide some insights into the studies and practices of political translation.