A Translation Report On Language:the Cultural Tool (Chapter Ⅰ) Under The Guidance Of The Skopos Theory

Nowadays,linguistics has become a well-known discipline,and its related books have attracted many readers.More and more students and ordinary readers have gained huge academic interest in it.Therefore,it is necessary to translate those books.The first chapter of Language: The Cultural Tool was chosen to undertake this translation practice in order to demonstrate that the Skopos theory can be a guiding theory for the translation of this subject.The target readers include students and ordinary readers in need of acquiring linguistics knowledge.So the goals of this translation project are to present the same reading experience as native readers can gain and also properly deliver the author’s writing purpose and crucial arguments.The author’s thoughts and arguments on linguistics,based on his personal research experience,are the main focus of this book,which includes topics such as the origin and nature of language.In terms of language,the book has particular characteristics,such as the use of precise and vivid words,complex but distinct sentence structures,and phrases expressing strong emotions.The three major rules of the Skopos theory,namely the Skopos rule,coherence rule,and fidelity rule,were examined in the study to see how well the Skopos theory fit those features.Meanwhile,the cohesive devices put forward by Halliday was selected to guide the translation at the discourse level.This report investigated how to solve translation difficulties at the level of phonology,lexicon,sentence,and discourse.Those difficulties are the following: the proper selection of words and sentence structure in accordance with the habit of the target language expression as well as the coherence in discourse.In the translation,different translation methods were used to solve those difficulties,such as conversion,omission,and amplification.Several cohesion devices,including structural cohesion and non-structural cohesion,were used to achieve coherence.According to my translation practice and literature analysis,the Skopos theory can provide effective guiding strategies in selecting vocabulary and sentence structure in translation.The cohesive devices are very useful for achieving discourse coherence.Those translation approaches were employed during the translation process.Although this report has some limitations,such as the fact that just the first chapter was translated,it can provide much experience for other projects of similar kinds,and will be useful for future studies that aim to enhance the quality of translation between English and Chinese.