On Luxun's Translation From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

Lu Xun's translation activities hold a very important position in the Chinese translation history. "Literal translation" was put forward by Lu Xun in the 1930s, who regarded translation as the way of achieving the purpose of reforming national personality and that "literal translation" would facilitate the reconstruction of a nation's culture, but it was subsequently criticized, reproached and neglected. According to Skopos theory, translation is a complex activity designed to achieve a certain purpose, which focuses on the target text instead of the source text, and the status of the translator and the target readers. The translating method chosen by the translator is determined by the aim of the target text. Lawrence Venuti's theory of foreignization defines a foreignizing strategy in terms of notions of faithfulness and fluency, selection of foreign texts and selection of discourse and language. A foreignizing translation aims to achieve heterogeneity by signifying linguistic and cultural foreignness.Through the employment of the Skopos theory and the theories of "domestication" and "foreignization", the thesis will reveal the deep social reasons for Lu Xun's"literal translation"and"rigid translation" and the inner motives of Luxun's by thorough analysis of them in this article, so that we can make an impartial appraisal of Luxun's translation. The thesis will from a new aspect explore Luxun's translation and his translation method of "chongyi" or multi-lingual transference he adopted in the translating and the background in which the method was engendered. Luxun had to employ "chongyi" because he didn't know the languages of the small and weak nationalities. In order to be faithful to the source languages, he had to adopt the method of "literal translation"; which Luxun had been using in his late translation, and so "the mode of literature translation of small and weak nationalities" came into being. At last the thesis argued that any activity including translation had a certain purpose and under the multiculturalism we should also employ the method of "chongyi" to carry out the communications between the different languages and cultures.