On English Translation Of Chinese Press Neologisms: In The Light Of Skopos Theory

Mary Snell-Horny states, in her book Translation Studies: An Integrated Approach, that there are two main schools of translation theory which now dominate the scene in Europe. One represents the linguistic approaches, and the other the functionalist approaches to translation.The linguistic approaches aim at making the study of translation rigorously scientific and watertight. All the linguistically oriented schools of translation theory have the central concept of translation equivalence in common. For many years,"equivalence"or"equivalent"has been considered essential in any definition of translation. Catford defines translation as"the replacement of textual material in another language (source language) by equivalent textual material in another language (target language)."He even maintains that"the central problem of translation practice is that of finding TL (target language) translation equivalents". Nida and Taber describe translation as"translating consists in reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source language message, first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style". Obviously, these definitions are all strikingly similar. They emphasis on equivalence.In recent years, translation theory has exploded with new developments. A"German School"of functionalist translation theory made its debut in the 1970s. Taking equivalence as her basis, Reiss developed translation theory. She introduced functionalist approaches to translation. Hans Vermeer, Reiss's student, went one step further study and shifted the focus of translation theory away from equivalence to the Skopos of translation action. As far as Vermeer is concerned, translation is a form of translational action based on a source text. Vermeer states that"any forms of translational action, including therefore translation itself, may be conceived as an action."and"any action has an aim, a purpose…, the word Skopos, then, is a technical term for the aim or purpose of a translation."This is why Vermeer calls his theory Skopostheorie, a theory of purposeful action. Skopos theory has played a major role in the development of functionalism."German School"proposes that translating is a purposeful activity. Skopos theory, the most important theory of functionalism, consists of three rules, namely, Skopos rule, coherence rule and fidelity rule. The rules and ideas of Skopos theory may be very effectively applied in the translation of Chinese press neologisms.According to these rules, the translator has his full freedom to choose various techniques and works out his creativity to carry out the purpose of the translation.This thesis probes into the translation of Chinese press neologisms in the light of Skopos theory. As we all know, Neologisms as part of a language are also in close relationship with the society and its culture, which unexceptionally influence the formation and development of a neologism. In other terms, neologisms may more or less involve and reflect the national social beliefs, customs, culture, system and mentality. As far as translation is concerned, it is really hard and sometimes impossible to transfer the culturally-loaded implication of neologisms, for which no ready equivalents whatsoever could be found in the target language.Chinese press neologisms undoubtedly reflect the development of Chinese society. In order to make new policies, new ideas and new things of our country be understood by the outside world, how to translate Chinese neologism into English accurately becomes more important. In the light of the Skopos theory, this thesis has performed a careful study on the translation of Chinese press neologisms. At the same time, this thesis has carefully probed into the strategies and techniques of the translation of Chinese press neologisms, such as explanation, deletion, back translation, literary translation and annotation. Therefore, the feasibility of the application of these strategies has been fully testified.Generally speaking, translation practice falls into literary and non-literary translation. For a fairly long period, great importance has been attached to literary translation to the neglect of non-literary translation in translation studies and practice in China.Chinese press neologisms account for an important part of non-literary translation. In the view of the Chinese press neologisms characteristics, the translation should be different from that of other genres. The traditional strategies lay emphases on"faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance"or"equivalent", but these strategies seem increasingly inadequate for the Chinese press neologisms translation. The translation of Chinese press neologisms, sharing certain characteristics of literary translation, though, has its own peculiarities. In the English translation of Chinese press neologisms, general techniques may be applied, but new strategies and principles must be explored and outlined and"adequacy"as a new translation criterion in Skopostheorie should be taken, too.