Lin Yutang's Translation Of "Six Chapters Of A Floating Life" From The Perspective Of Skopostheory

Translating is a type of human action, and it is a purposeful activity. Therefore, the prime principle determining any translation process is the purpose (skopos) of the overall translational action. Accordingly,"adequacy"which refers to the qualities of a target text with regard to the translation brief is taken as the criterion of translation. This is what Skopostheory states. As a beak with the traditional idea of equivalence and an important complement to translation theories, Skopostheory thus opens up a new perspective for the translation practice and study. However, although this theory was proposed in as early as 1980s, it was not introduced to Chinese translators until recently, and few translations have been discussed within the framework of Skopostheory.This paper is aimed at taking a thorough and objective analysis of Skopostheory based on a concrete translation case. After expatiating the Skopostheory, the author of this paper first analyzes the purpose for Lin Yutang in translating Six Chapters of a Floating Life with descriptive method adopted by Skopostheory, and then gives a descriptive analysis of Lin's translation practice on how to deal with the transfer of Chinese culture, the intertextual coherence, intratextual coherence and his relation with the original author from the perspective of the important principles within the framework of Skopostheory. The analysis leads to the conclusion that Lin Yutang's translation of Six Chapters of a Floating Life is adequate, for it fulfills the intended purpose of informing the readers of the Chinese culture. And the study, in return, proves that Skopostheory can really solve the problems and explain the phenomena in translation practice, thus it has practically directive function.