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The Main Features Of The Functionalist Approaches & Its Application In Literary Translation

Posted on:2007-12-26Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:J Q MaFull Text:PDF
GTID:2155360182478287Subject:Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
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Functionalist approaches to translation regard translation as a kind of purposeful action, and think the target text is supposed to be made on the basis of source text to achieve a certain purpose in the target language context. Functionalist proponents have proposed that the source text is only an "information offer" for the target text. And meanwhile, they redefined the positions of source text and target text in translation process, thus bringing upon themselves many criticisms, one of which concerns whether functionalist approaches can be applied to literary translation. This thesis is an attempt to dissolve such a suspicion.Traditional theorists insist on seeking perfection in literary translation, and the author of this thesis finds that such an insistence is based on their unpractical assumption that the target text in the target language context must be of the same function as that of source text in the source language context. Theorists such as Nida and Newmark do take functions of the target text into consideration, but their theories are not completely applicable to literary translation. Only functionalist approaches admit that the target text may have the same function(s) with or different function(s) from that of the source text as long as the function(s) of the target text is not fundamentally contradictory to the function(s) of the source text. Being descriptive rather than prescriptive, functionalism theory is theoretically applicable to literary translation, because literature work is also an open system and can be interpreted in various ways.For this thesis, the author has specifically carried out a case study, which analyzes the different treatments of some original chapters in translations of Hongloumeng. A Dream of Red Mansions by the Yangs is generally document-like, source text-oriented and mainly focused on inter-textual coherence;while The Story of the Stone by Hawkes is instrument-like, target text-oriented and focused on intra-textual coherence. However, the different features demonstrated in the two versions are consistent to the purposes the translators set to reach and to the expected functions they assigned to the target texts. The basic rules for the functionalistapproaches applied in the translation process can not only explain why there exist the differences between the two target texts, but also give new clues to a fair judgment of whether a literary translation is good or poor. Thus, the author argues that functionalist approaches can be applied to both literary text translation and non-literary text translation.
Keywords/Search Tags:function, Skopos theory, coherence rule, documentary translation, instrumental translation
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