The E-C Translation Of Cosmetics Instruction: A Perspective Of Skopos Theory

With China's entry into WTO and the strengthening of opening up policy, plenty of foreign merchandises flood into Chinese markets, among which there are foreign cosmetics. Owing to the severe competition between different cosmetic brands, every cosmetic company racks their brains to promote sales. Therefore, how to make the consumers know their products very well is the chief issue. One of the most direct ways is to show the buyers the cosmetics instructions. Consequently, translation of cosmetics instructions is fairly significant. However, due to the insufficient attention to cosmetics instructions translation at home and abroad, studies in the cosmetics instruction translation fall behind other pragmatic translation, such as tourist translation, advertisement translation and etc. Moreover, the quality of the translation of cosmetics instructions is far from satisfactory.Cosmetics instruction is a very practical type of writing with high commercial value, and the ultimate purpose of all cosmetics instructions is the same—to promote sales. Because of differences of language and culture between Chinese and English, a good cosmetics instruction, when rendered, may not be successful to the target audience, especially if the translator rigidly clings to the original form in cosmetics instruction translation, the translation may not produce the evocative effect and may lead to the failure of promoting sales on the target market.A review of translation theory has shown that theories applying to the translation of cosmetics instruction are quite limited. However, Skopos Theory is a relatively new model in translational studies, and it can release translation from the shackle of the source text, providing a new perspective to translation, especially such pragmatic translation as cosmetics instruction translation. According to functionalism, translators are encouraged to make full use of all the sources of information of the source text and are entitled to choose whatever translation strategies they think appropriate to achieve the functions of the translation. That is what is called "the end justifies the means". It is hoped that by applying Skopos Theory, which is the major theory in functionalist approach, the English-Chinese cosmetics instructions translation can better fulfill the purpose of promoting the purchase and achieving the functions of cosmetics instructions.This paper mainly studies cosmetics instructions translation from the perspective of Skopos Theory. At the beginning of the paper, the author generalizes previous studies on Skopos Theory and cosmetics instructions at home and abroad. Besides, it focuses on English cosmetics instruction as its object of the research and analyzes its classification, components, functions and linguistic features systematically. What is more, this thesis offers a rough description of Skopos Theory and its three rules. According to Skopos Theory, in the process of translation three principles should be adhered to: Skopos rule, coherence rule and fidelity rule. Finally, it deals with three major aspects, which are attentive orientation in cosmetics instruction translation guided by Skopos Theory, the application of three rules toward cosmetics instructions translation, and a case study to evaluate cosmetics instructions translation. The theory and the case study of this paper prove that Skopos Theory can provide guidance to cosmetics instructions translation, and is of great priority.