A Comparative Study Of The Chinese Versions Of The Buried Giant From The Perspective Of Toury’s Translational Norms Theory

Kazuo Ishiguro is a Japanese-English novelist,the winner of Nobel Prize in Literature in2017.As one of his representative literary creations,The Buried Giant has caused a heated discussion among scholars at home and abroad since its publication.However,the majority of scholars mainly focus on the literary aspect of the work,and less attention is paid to its translation study.This thesis is intended to conduct a comparative study on the two Chinese translations of The Buried Giant in the framework of Toury’s translational norms theory,aiming to find out the norms embodied in the two translations as well as similarities and differences among them.In terms of preliminary norms,the author tries to explain the factors influencing the selection of the source text and illustrates the directness of translation.Concerning operational norms,this thesis conducts a comparative study from aspects of paragraph division,addition,omission,typesetting and language style.In addition,specific examples are selected to analyze the similarities and differences of initial norms in the two translated texts.Through comparative analysis,the thesis finds that Zhou Xiaojin’s version is more inclined towards the “adequacy” of translation.He renders the text concisely and strictly,keeping the paragraph division consistent with the original,highly restoring the language features and focusing on the conveyance of its language style.While Yang Huijin’s version is apt to “acceptable translation”.Traditional printing and vertical typesetting are adopted.Vivid language expressions,four-character phrases,the use of addition and omission are of high frequencies.In addition,Yang Huijun reorganizes some paragraphs in the original text.In short,through the comparative analysis of two translations,it is conducive to interpreting The Buried Giant from multiple perspectives and discovering the translation laws abided by different translators during the process of translation.