A Study On Tian Yan Lun From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

As one of the most influential translators and translation theorists, Yan Fu has translated a lot of western works on the western capitalist economic theories, sociology, politics, philosophy and methodology, among which Tian Yan Lun is no doubt the most influential one.The thoughts advocated in Tian Yan Lun, such as"the struggle for existence","natural selection"(物竟天择) and"the survival of the fittest"(适者生存), have at that time made significant effect on the Chinese intellectual world and aroused Chinese people's awareness to save the country, and these thoughts have also contributed to China's social development and change. Therefore,Yan Fu is also regarded as China's enlightenment thinker. Besides, in his Introductory Remarks on the Translation of Tian Yan Lun, Yan Fu also puts forward the principles of"Xin Da Ya", which means"faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance"and which has played a very important role in the history of Chinese translation and has also been considered as the transaltion criterion by most Chinese translators and translation theorists in their translation practice and studies. However, Yan Fu doesn't translate the original text literally, nor does he follow the language style, the language form or the content of the origianal exactly; instead he turns modern English into classical Chinese and adds his own comments and notes which are not included in the original. Thus Tian Yan Lun is not an equivalent to the original and has received criticisms despite many compliments. Many people argue that Yan Fu's translation practice doesn't comply with his translation principles and Tain Yan Lun is a failure of translation since it is not closely faithful to the original in language style, language form or the content.This thesis contends that to measure whether a translation is a success or not depends not only on the equivalence between the translation and the original, but also on the actual results and effects of the translation in translation practice. Harboring the skopos of enlightening the people and saving the nation, Yan Fu renderes the original into classical Chinese in order to ensure his intended readers, the Chinese feudal scholars who were then fond of classical Chinese, would read his translation; and he changes the language form and reorganizes the language in order to make his translation more adaptable to Chinese reading habits; and he uses addition, deletion and shift in order to enable readers to better understand and thus possibly accept the ideas of his transaltion and then take action to save China. In order to achieve his skopos, Yan Fu has adopted these special translaiton methods (mostly based on domestication), which agrees with the German skopos theory in many ways. The skopos theory originated in Germany in the late 1970s and it is the main part of the functionalist theory of German School. Different from the traditional translation theories which lay more emphamsis on conveying the exact meaning of the source text, the theory argues that translation is a purposeful action and the intended purpose of the target text determines the translation methods and strategies. This thesis, on one hand, gives an analysis of the great social effect and academic fruits of TianYan Lun and tends to prove that it is a successful translation; on the other hand, based on the skopos theory, the thesis further studies Yan Fu's special translation methods adopted in TianYan Lun and his principles of"faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance"and tries to conclude that Tian Yan Lun is a flexible combination of his translation practice and translation principles, and that his special translation methods offer us some important inspritions in translation practice.