Normalization in Translation

Book excerpt: Normalization in Translation: Corpus-based Diachronic Research into Twentieth-century Englishâ "Chinese Fictional Translation provides a comprehensive description of translation norms in two different historical contexts in twentieth-century China. Drawing on a corpus methodology, this book adopts a socio-historical approach to translation studies from a diachronic perspective, comparing translated and non-translated fictional texts from two historical periods to systematically explore the variation of normalization across time, and to highlight the social significance of translation activities by contextualizing the research results. The book includes detailed discussions of diachronic corpus construction, linguistic manifestations of normalization, changes in translation norms, and socio-cultural constraints for these changes. It expands the scope of previous studies and shows how translation studies can benefit from the use of a corpus methodology by providing an explanation, not simply a description, of how changes in translation behavior have come about. This book will be of interest to students on courses in translation and intercultural studies, as well as researchers interested in the areas of translation studies, corpus linguistics and contrastive studies of English and Chinese.