Functionalist Approach To The Contrastive Analysis On The Translations Of The Art Of War

Chinese traditional culture is a great treasure house with a remote historical origin. In this depository, Sun Tzu s The Art of War, which is a Chinese military treatise written during the 6th century BC, is a fabulous literary work.Different translation theories have been applied to research on the translations of Sun Tzu s The Art of War. However, few studies have been made of the application of the German Functionalist Translation Theory to the English translation of Sun Tzu s The Art of War. In view of the vacancy, the author of this thesis, in order to make her contribution to The Art of War s translation and promote the The Art of War translation research, attempts to apply German functionalist translation theory to the contrastive analysis of two most influential English representations of The Art of War. The thesis takes the three layers of the functionalist translation theory as the special perspectives of the thesis, Katharina Reiss Text Typology, Hans J. Vermeer s Skopos Theory and Justa Holz-Manttari s Translational Action Theory.The thesis consists of four chapters. Chapter One introduces the thesis briefly. Chapter Two gives a general review of previous researches on The Art of War and their restrictions. Chapter Three makes an introduction to Sun Tzu and his The Art of War. Moreover, brief introduction to the two English versions of The Art of War and their authors is presented. In Chapter Four, the thesis first makes an overall introduction to the thesis theoretical framework functionalist translation theory. Then, a contrastive analysis of the very two English versions would be made in the form of case study. Finally, the conclusion is the summary of the whole thesis. The conclusion points out that Giles version is better than Griffith s. Although Griffith s translation is better in skopos theory, Giles translation is better in capturing the accurate text type of source text, and in preserving the Chinese cultural specificity, which is important in translational action theory.