A Study Of Goldblatt’s Translation Of Tales Of Hulan River From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

Tales of Hulan River, masterpiece of Xiao Hong, who has been praised as “one of the four talented women during Republic of China period” and “literature Luoshen in 1930s”, is of high literary value. Xiao Hong describes the local customs of her hometown in a natural and fresh writing style. Meanwhile, she powerfully accuses the old ways of thinking, such as traditional Chinese superstition and misogyny, and expresses her complicated feelings of sympathy for the villages’ misery and her irritation at their indifference and ignorance. It is not an easy task to successfully translate this book. Up to now, there’s only one English version translated by Howard Goldblatt, a celebrated American translator, great sinologist and the major foreign researcher of Xiao Hong’s works. Since the English version is not available on the market, few researches have been conducted. Therefore, it is of significance to carry out a research on the English version of Tales of Hulan River.The core of German functionalist approaches is skopos theory which was put forward by Hans J. Vermeer. He thinks that translation is a purposeful activity on the basis of source text instead of a simple exchange of languages. Therefore, translators should choose the best translation methods to serve their intended functions on the basis of the analysis of the source text. Meanwhile, according to the skopos theory, whether the translators’ purposes could be adequately achieved becomes the evaluation standard of translation.Based on skopos theory, this thesis makes an analysis of the English version of Tales of Hulan River with the application of skopos rule, coherence rule and fidelity rule.This thesis first introduces the research background, research purposes and significance, research methodology and research questions. Then the thesis presents the previous researches of Howard Goldblatt’s translations and the English and Chinese versions of Tales of Hulan River as well as previous studies of skopos theory and its applications to translation practice, from which we can conclude that researches on the English version of this novel is of great value. In addition, this thesis introduces the historical background and development of skopos theory and focuses on illustrating the three rules of skopos theory. Thereafter, under the guidance of skopos theory, studies of the English version of Tales of Hulan River are carried out from three perspectives, namely, skopos rule, coherence rule, fidelity rule. Translation methods adapted in the process of translation, including literal translation, free translation, adaptation, addition and omission are summarized and detailed analysis is made based on these methods. Lastly, this thesis leads to the conclusion that skopos theory can be used to analyze the English version of Tales of Hulan River to fulfill translation purposes and appropriately spread Chinese culture. This study provides a new research perspective for translation researches, meanwhile, the limitations of this study are pointed out, which are of significance to the future researches.