Toward The Target Language Readership

Translating is considered a purposeful activity. This is the approach put forward by German functionalists who have brought about a theoretical revolution in contemporary translation studies. In contrast with most traditional theories focusing on the source language, functionalists emphasize that translating is a communicative activity which should be adapted to the needs of the target readers. From the perspective of functionalism, or the so-called Skopostheorie, translation means 'to produce a text in a target setting for a target purpose and a target addressees in target circumstances.'Functionalism has become increasingly popular among scholars in contemporary translation studies. Studies on English-Chinese literary translation are of no exception. By using a popular British novel - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (the English original vs. the Chinese version) as a case study, this paper tries to expound the E-C version in literary translation based on functionalist approaches. First, a theoretical framework consisting of three parts is set up as listed below: (1) Skopostheorie; (2) the nature of the readership; (3) contextual analysis. Then, functionalist approaches adopted in literary translation are presented in detail and they cover the following three aspects: (1) Skopos-oriented model; (2) culture specificity rule; (3) text types. Finally, under the guidance of Skopos, a detailed analysis is made to the E-C translation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in terms of four aspects as follows: (1) cross-cultural awareness in translation; (2) translation of metaphors (3) translation of proper names, (4) mistranslation.It concludes that translation is a human behaviour with an outright aim or purpose. It should be oriented toward the target readership in order to achieve its goal of communicative function. Translation has thus become an integral part of cross-cultural communication.