Analysis Of Six Chapters Of A Floating Life Under Skopos Theory

This thesis is a study on the translation characteristics and the cause of Lin Yutang's translation of Six Chapters of a Floating Life from the perspective of skopos theory, Lin Yutang's translation theory and translator's subjectivity.Six Chapters of a Floating Life is a testimony to Lin Yutang's superb skills as a great translator. By choosing plenty of detailed examples, we draw a conclusion that Lin Yutang had adopted different methods flexibly with the goal of conveying Chinese culture to the target readers. While these translation strategies can just reflect the translator's subjectivity, which include foreignization, domestication, amplification, deletion, notes in and out of the text.The thesis consists of introduction, body ( Chapter two to Chapter four) and conclusion, altogether five chapters. The first chapter aims at making clear the reason why the author does the present research, the writing purpose and the significance of the paper. Chapter two includes "Literature Review", which is to review previous research fruits on the study of Lin's translation, brief introduction to Lin Yutang's translation theory and Skopos theory. In Lin's translation theory, he puts forward that a translator should satisfy three requirements, which are thorough understanding of the source text, a good command of his mother tongue, and sufficient practice to form correct views about translation criteria and translating strategies, and fulfill three responsibilities, which are responsibilities for the original author, for the target readers and for the aesthetic beauty. Besides these, Lin concludes three rules for translation----fidelity, smooth and aesthetic beauty. He was the first Chinese translator who based his translation theory on the basis of modern linguistics and psychology. Chapter three and chapter four is the key part of the thesis, which explores Lin Yutang's translation practice from a microscopic perspective by means of the application of Lin's translation theory, skopos theory, and translator's subjectivity. Chapter three attempts to analyze Lin's translation characteristics and the reason why he does so from the point of view of Lin's translation theory, basically two rules--fidelity rule and aesthetic beauty rule. Lin's translation theory cannot explain all the phenomenon of Lin's translation, so the author continues to analyze the translation from the point of view of Skopos theory, basically two rules—Skopos rule and coherence rule. Furthermore, through the analyzing of six different strategies Lin adopts, we can find that translator's subjectivity is in full play in the translation. The last chapter is "Conclusion". Due to the political reason, the research on Lin Yutang and his works is far from enough if compared to the study of his contemporary, such as Lu Xun. The author hopes that such a study is a helpful complement to today's studies on Lin Yutang, and a small contribution to the present translation studies in China.