A Study On Ba Jin's Kuai Le Wang Zi From The Perspective Of Skopostheorie

Oscar Wilde stands out in the English literary history with his lifelong advocation of his Aestheticism slogan "Art for Art's sake", his works of various genres and also Wilde is famous or notorious for his wits and his scandals. Throughout his life, he tried his hand on plays, essays, fictions, poems and also the two collections of fairy tales, which are also called short fiction by some critics who doubt whether they are suitable to be classified as children's literature, namely The Happy Prince and Other Tales and A House of Pomegranates. Quite different from the traditional fairly tales, the two books, especially the latter one, are unique in both the contents and the styles. Not only are they dedicated to the children but also the adults who love them and who can read them in rather different ways and interpret them from different perspectives.Wilde's fairy tales were introduced into China less than two decades ago and thereafter translated by several translators, among which Ba Jin's version is commonly regarded as the classical one. As a master of Chinese language and English, Ba Jin's version successfully reproduces Wilde's style and also expresses Ba Jin's understanding of the works. Being loyal to Wilde's source text, Ba Jin also has his own purpose of translating these tales and he attains them by adopting certain translation methods. This thesis will analyze Ba Jin's version of Wilde's fairy tales from the perspective of Skopostheorie which is the pillar of the German functionalist approach of translation.Put forward by German scholars Katharina Reiss and Hans Vermeer, Skopostheorie makes a breakthrough into the traditional approach of translation studies by regarding translation as a purposeful human action with certain intentions, which is called "Skopos" (translation purpose). According to the Skopotheorie, the prime principle determining any translation purpose is the purpose of the overall translational action. It also offers three basic rules, namely the Skopos rule, the coherence rule and the fidelity rule, of which the Skopos rule is the top-ranking one and the other two are both subordinate to it.First of all, the author will discuss Ba Jin's purposes in translating The Happy Prince and Other Tales and A House of Pomegranates; then a descriptive analysis of Ba's translation practice on how to fulfill his purposes will be conducted in the light of the three basic rules. The translation strategies and specific methods Ba Jin employs in translating will also be summarized.The analysis leads to the conclusion that Ba's translation fulfills his intended purposes of learning how to be a better man and conducting his writing practice and his aim of using the translation as a weapon to fight against the old society.Also, it proves that Skopostheorie can really solve the problems and explain the phenomena in translation practice. The statement that Skopostheorie is not suitable to analyze the literary works is too absolute, and this theory can provide a new perspective for the studying of the literary translation.