On Cultural Transmission In Gladys Yang's The Border Town From The Perspective Of Skopostheorie

Translation has been considered to be an important means for the interchange between China and Western countries,and cultural translation has always been paid close attention to by scholars both at home and abroad.However,there has been an unbalance in the number of cultural and literary translations,resulting in the fact that Chinese people know much more about the West than Western people know about China,which leads to the non-equivalence of communication between Chinese culture and Western culture.Recently,the transmission of Chinese culture through translation has already become a great concern of more and more scholars.Therefore,the transference and rendition of cultural elements in translation from Chinese to English becomes a big concern of many translators.As the masterpiece of Shen Congwen,Bian Cheng is known as the most pure novel in Chinese modern literature.The novella reflects the local custom and harmonious life in West Hunan.Therefore,how to render the mysterious but traditional local culture by translation has been the focus of translators at home and abroad.So far,there have been four English versions,among which Gladys Yang's The Border Town has become a widely acceptable version in the western world since its publication came out in 1981.As the kernel of German Functionalist Approach to Translation,which was produced in the 1970 s,the Skopostheorie holds that translation is a kind of purposeful action and the primary factor determining the translation procedures is the translation purpose.Therefore,the translation strategies adopted by translators depend on the purpose of the translational action.To some extent,the Skopostheorie ends up the long-run dispute over the free vs faithful translation and domestication vs foreignization.Thus,it provides not only a practical guiding principle for translators,but also a theoretical support for the translators' choice of translation strategies as well as a rational theoretical framework for target text analysis.Within the framework of Skopostheorie,this thesis aims to discuss and analyze the translation strategies and methods adopted by Gladys Yang in The Border Town with the objective of transmitting Chinese culture.It is based on Shen Congwen' Bian Cheng as the source text and Gladys Yang's English version The Border Town as the target text.According to the Skopostheorie,the translation approaches adopted by the translator depend on the intended purpose of the translation.Therefore,this thesis firstly makes a detailed analysis of all these participants in Gladys Yang's translation process and the translation briefs in order to explore the purpose of Gladys Yang's The Border Town.Then,statistics on the employment of different methods in translating each of the five types of cultural elements are gathered and analyzed by a quantitative research.And after that,the strategies and methods adopted in the translation of the cultural elements in Gladys Yang's The Border Town are analyzed based on the Skopostheorie.Finally,a conclusion is reached as follows.(1)The TT is aimed to attract the interest of foreign readers in Chinese literature and culture and disseminate Chineseliterature and culture overseas.(2)Gladys Yang applies a flexible translation strategy with domestication dominated and foreignization as a complementary in dealing with different types of cultural elements,and employs various translation methods including: literal translation,literal translation plus annotation,transliteration,transliteration plus annotation,literal translation plus transliteration,free translation,substitution and omission.And as a result,she succeeds in transmitting the specificity of Chinese culture.Through this research,the author of this thesis hopes to provide an explanation to the choice of translation strategies and methods adopted by translators,and give some reference for future studies on cultural transmission of Chinese literature translation.