On The Translation Of Food Product Information From The Perspective Of The Skopostheorie

With the continuous deepening of reform and opening-up and the successful applications for accession to the WTO, China's dynamism in the international economic activities have doubled in many countries. The world economic and trade exchanges and cooperation have become increasingly frequent. With the continuous development of society, in order to satisfy people's increasing material and cultural life, the rapid emergence of various new products has appeared. It has also brought countless instruction manual. In order to allow the consumers to recognize the products quickly, the proper use of high-quality manual plays a vital role. Manual vocabulary choices have the following features:simpleness and formalness. In the semantic choice it also has its own characteristics, of which words with literal meaning and demonstrative meaning are preferably used. For the sake of brevity, many acronyms are adopted in the instruction manual.The paper draws upon the Skopostheorie represented by Hans J. Vermeer and text typology represented by Katharina Reiss in order to make an analysis of the translation in Food Product Information (FPI).Food Product Information falls within the category of pragmatic writings which always display their own stylistic features. Generally speaking, a FPI contains six parts, namely, directions on using the product, descriptions of ingredients, results, information on storage, production date and shelf life, and each of them tends to have different functions. In the light of Reiss's text typology, they are classified into three text types:the content-focused texts which include the descriptions of ingredients, production date and shelf life; the form-focused texts which refer to the results intended to fulfill the expressive function; and the appeal-focused texts which involve the directions on using the product and information on storage. A FPI to a given commodity is a kind of purposeful text which, on the basis of its promotional effect through advertising, is aimed at persuading the readers to buy the commodity directly. In translation, the target readers' expectations of the functions of the text types should be considered. On the basis of the Skopostheorie and text typology, two translation approaches are put forward, one is factual approach and the other is emotional approach, at the same time, some suggestions for translating FPI are presented.The study is significant because of its practicality, it can help foreign consumers to understand Chinese food products and stimulate their desire for consumption, thus achieving the purpose of promoting exports. At the same time it is also instrumental for the Chinese food product manufacturers to establish good images in economic exchange with foreign countries, thereby creating more economic and social profits.