Translation Report On Literary Translation And Cultural Mediators In‘Peripheral’Cultures-Customs Officers Or Smugglers?(Chapter 10)

The source text is the tenth chapter of Literary Translation and Cultural Mediators in ‘Peripheral’ Cultures-Customs Officers or Smugglers? by Maud Gonne on the studies of ANT in peripheral Belgian translating activities.Translating studies have long been learning from other disciplines.As an important sociological theory,ANT has been increasingly highlighted these years.This project is to deepen the studies in this area and promote translation studies in sociology.The source text is an academic article and also an informative text involving a number of interdisciplinary terms,abstract words and complex sentences with nominal clauses.The major difficulty rests with finding the right balance between“adequacy” and “acceptability” in the TT,which requires that the original message be delivered in an intact way and the target text be readable for the target readers.This report will apply a descriptive method in analyzing the “adequacy” and “acceptability”of the target text and give explanation for what has affected the translator’s decisions.The report finds out that the target text leans toward “adequacy” in terms of the content and toward “acceptability” in terms of the form.Such an outcome is affected by multiple elements which are related to the translator’s decisions before and during the translating process.This is what Toury holds—translators are guided by different norms.The major reason for the “adequacy” of target text is that the ST involves an area less developed in China,making the source culture more privileged,resulting in a preference of “adequacy” to “acceptability”,which constitutes the initial norm.Other than that,readers’ expectation and translator’s background also can affect the translation.