Translation Of Drawing Textbooks From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

Language serves as a vehicle for communication; its main function is to convey information in different contexts. Art comes from life and reflects life. As a special form of art, cartoon influences people’s viewpoint of politics and their judgment of current affairs. Moreover, it pushes people to think independently and to understand the humor of self-mockery. Its function is not limited to telling a joke; it reflects social realities. More importantly, a successful cartoonist can make use of countless interesting scenes to depict people’s view of life and their attitude to life.With the second part Creating Cartoon Characters from the textbook Drawing Cartoons&Comics for Dummies as its researching subject and under the guidance of Skopos Theory, this thesis attempts to analyze and explore the problems facing the author in the translation process. To better convey the content of the source text, various translation techniques, such as adding, omitting and reorganization, are made use of, thereby arousing readers’interest in the Chinese version. It is found that problems encountering the author include the translation of drawing terminologies, the grasping of the language style for the textbook and approaching of differences between Chinese and English in the process. To solve problems above, the author resorts to reading textbooks for drawing, watching video courses online and consulting professionals in this area.It is the suggestion that full preparations, familiarization with professional backgrounds and perusal of parallel texts render your translation idiomatic and constructive.