A Study Of The English Version Of Chinese Science Fiction The Three-body Problem In Perspective Of The Skopos Theory

With the development of science and technology,science fictions,as a new genre,are accepted by more and more readers.Over the years,most of the science fictions written by western writers have been introduced to China.However,in recent years,Chinese science fictions are going out to the west and to all over the world.The most outstanding example is The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin,which was translated by Chinese American Ken Liu.As soon as the translation came out,it won compliments from lots of western readers.Obviously,it is the translator’s hard work that shows the high quality of Chinese literature and attracts more foreign readers.The thesis makes study of the English version of the Three-Body Problem translated by Ken Liu.In this thesis,the existing research results of science fiction are firstly reviewed and organized.From the view of the number of domestic and foreign scholars’ researches on the translation of science fiction,the majority of these works are the domestic scholars’ research works on the western science fiction and there are few studies on the English versions of Chinese science fiction.The writer,in the perspective of the Skopos Theory,applies it into the translation practice of science fiction combining the characteristics of science fiction.The writer also makes a large number of case analyses to analyze the English version of The Three-Body Problem on the basis of three rules of the Skopos Theory.Firstly,from the perspective of the Skopos Rule,the writer,by means of analyzing applications of three translation strategies namely adaptation,omission and addition,illustrates that translation should be able to take place in the context and culture of the target language,and in the way that the receptor is expected to be translated into the target language.Secondly,from the perspective of the Coherence Rule,the writer divides it into two parts namely intra-textual coherence and inter-textual coherence.The result proves that the translation is readable and acceptable by applying the Coherence Rule,which enables the receiver to understand,and has meaning in the culture of the target language and in the communicative context of the target text.Thirdly,from the perspective of the Fidelity Rule,the writer analyzes it from the fidelity of the lexical level and the stylistic level.The result proves that the Fidelity Rule can reproduce the style of the original work and it requires that the effect of the target text on readers should be close to that of the original text.With the analysis of the three rules,the writer draws a conclusion in two parts.On the word level,the translator can uses conversion of parts of speech,adaptation,omission and addition to achieve the purpose of translation.While on the sentence level,the translator can uses transformation of sentence,regulation of word order,division and combination to convey the meaning of the original and attract more readers.Meanwhile,as the background of The Three-Body Problem is the Cultural Revolution,there are lots of words and sentences loaded with Chinese characteristics.The writer finds out through the guidance of the Skopos Theory,the translator can translate such words and sentences smoothly to the foreign readers.The fact that the Chinese science fictions go abroad actually means the Chinese culture goes abroad.The writer sincerely hopes that her thesis can play a trivial role in the great process of cross-cultural communications.In this thesis,the contents of the Cultural Revolution are only used in translation studies,which have nothing to do with the political standing.