A Study On The Translation Of Taijiquan Texts From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

Taijiquan is a remarkable representative of Chinese Wushu, which grows from the excellent Chinese culture like traditional philosophy, traditional Chinese medicine and aesthetics and has acquired rich cultural connotations. Under the context of globalization, Taijiquan is becoming a world sport activity which attracts more and more people for its health-preserving function and cultural taste. In order to publicize Taijiquan in the foreign countries, spread Chinese culture and promote its communication with the world cultures of diversity, it is necessary to draw attention to the translation of Taijiquan texts.Although the English versions of Taijiquan texts become available in the past decades, translation quality is not greatly improved and confusion in translation still exists. Meanwhile, the few studies in this field mainly cover the discussion on choice of translation skills on the basis of several examples, which have the limitations of generalizaiton and no theoretical guidance. In addition, at present there is no systematic translation criticism on the existing translation versions. Therefore, the existing theoretical researches in this field cannot play the role in guiding the translation practice.Based on the review of the previous studies, the author of this thesis makes the attempt to perform a systematic analysis of a specific English translation version from the perspective of skopos theory and meanwhile, tries to explore the translation methods for the English translation of Chinese Taijiquan texts. Skopos theory takes translation as an action with purposes while the purpose of translation determines the translation process. The translation shall be evaluated by the fulfillment of the purpose. There are three basic rules for skopos theory:the skopos rule, the coherence rule and the fidelity rule, which are in a hierarchical order and the predominating one is the skopos rule and the other two are subordinate to it. This study aims to conduct a systematic analysis of the application of the three rules in the skopos theory to the English version of a Taijiquan book.The author of the thesis mainly performs a systematic analysis of the English translation of Taijiquan by the Foreign Languages Press from the perspective of the skopos theory in order to find out its fulfillment of the skopos, the effective ways adopted by the translators and how intratextual and intertextual coherence are achieved and based on the analysis of the translation, further summarizes the methods for translating Chinese Taijiquan texts into English. The conclusion indicates that despite some problems, the English version of Taijiquan fulfills its skopos of translation in general and the skopos theory can be used to analyze the English translation of Taijiquan texts. The innovative aspects of the thesis include the choice of Taijiquan texts as the research object and the examples and analyses are based on one English translation of Taijiquan. Meanwhile, the limitations are pointed out including the shortage of English references and target addressees'opinions and further researches in this field are expected.The vitality of Taijiquan can be demonstrated by its spreading in over 150 countries and regions in the world and the translation quality of Taijiquan texts with rich cultural connotation is to produce far-reaching effects on spreading Chinese culture to the world. This study is an attempt in applying skopos theory to English-Chinese translation of Taijiquan texts which aims to provide references to future studies.