A Study Of Translating Chinese Tang Poetry Into English With Skopostheorie

Translating as a purposeful activity was originated from the functionalist approaches to translation. Its basic theory is the skopostheorie. In literary translation,a translator's choice must be guided by some sort of intention or purpose.Translation is a text which is intended to function for the target receivers and, as such, may be intended for communicative function. In other words, one purpose which translating as a purposeful activity emphasizes is the purpose of intercultural communication between the source language speaking community and the target language speaking one.Literary language, (particularly poetic language) is clearly assumed to have a particular connotative, expressive or aesthetic meaning of its own, which may shed some light on the sender's intentions. It gives the literary text a specific value of its own, affects the interaction between writer and reader. Therefore, aesthetics should be another purpose in translating activity, especially in poetic translating.The functional approach is usually thought to leave translators free to do whatever they like with any source text, or worse, what their clients like. Thus, loyalty to all parts of participants should be the third purpose in translation.As one genre of literature, poetry is the elite in both Chinese language and its culture. In China, the ancient Chinese Tang poetry is the reflection of the quintessence of Chinese literature. As an important part of our culture and civilization, Chinese Tang poetry contains rich cultural connotations. With its unique characteristics of metrical and form regulations and the beauty of its simplicity and conciseness, Chinese Tang poetry is one of the brightest pearls in the world literature treasury.But how to translate Chinese tang poetry into English so as to transmit Chinese excellent culture and strengthen cultural communication between China and English-speaking countries and how to make perfect translations of poetry are still serious problems for all the translators and a hot issue in the circle of translation although many persons have done a good job in this field.By analyzing, carding and summarizing the theory of translating as a purposeful activity, this paper is to demonstrate that the translating of Chinese Tang poetry still has some certain purposes, which are mainly the purposes of intercultural communication, of aesthetics and of loyalty, briefly called"The Three Purposes". With the analysis of Li Bai's (李白) Songyouren (《送友人》)and its different English versions made by some scholars or translators both in china and other English-speaking countries as an example, this thesis is to give a descriptive demonstration on how"The Three Purposes"are applied into the translating practice of Chinese Tang poetry, and to point out that the application of"The Three Purposes"into translating Chinese Tang poetry can not just make the target text as"an original text", but also help English-speaking readers to have the same feelings of appreciating this"original text"as Chinese readers appreciating its Chinese version.From the theory and practice of translating as a purposeful activity, it is concluded that translating Chinese Tang Poetry into English with"The Three Purposes"is to help translators concern and study the practice of translating Chinese Tang Poetry much more widely and systematically, and create more and more excellent translation works, which is also another purpose or expectation of this paper.