On The Chinese Couplet Translation By Huang Zhongxi From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

Chinese couplets are a significant part of Chinese culture. They have a long history and are very popular in China. A Chinese couplet consists of two lines, with the first line and the second line called upper line and lower line respectively. The two lines have the same number of characters, the same syntactic structure, related content and corresponding part of speech and oblique and level tones. Therefore, it is endowed with much literary and artistic value which gives Chinese couplets much translation value. Although many difficulties may be encountered in the translation process and some couplets cannot be translated, the translation value of Chinese couplets cannot be affected. Nowadays, China and its culture are attracting more and more attention, which is a good opportunity for Chinese couplets to go international. However, compared with the numerous materials concerning the writing, collection and appreciation of Chinese couplets, materials about Chinese couplet translations are very rare. It requires more scholars to conduct further researches. The only book specialized in the detailed analysis of Chinese couplet translation is Preliminaries to Chinese Antithetical Couplets and Their Translation into English written by Huang Zhongxi. However, there are no papers studying on the couplet translations of Huang Zhongxi. Therefore, that is chosen as the research object of this thesis. The author will analyze the Chinese couplet translations of Huang from the perspective of Skopos Theory. That theory is chosen because Chinese couplet translation, as a cross-cultural communication activity, also has its "Skopos" or "purpose" which is to promote Chinese culture and make the potential readers know, accept and even like couplets. This purpose influences the whole translation process and result.Through detailed analysis of Huang’s couplet translations under the guidance of the three rules of Skopos Theory, the author assumes that Huang’s translations are basically consistent with Skopos Theory. Moreover, the author puts forward some translation strategies for Chinese couplet translation. First of all, alliteration, assonance, rhyme, heroic couplet and parallelism can be applied in translations to reproduce the aesthetic features of Chinese couplets to some extent. Besides, the reproduction of the meaning of couplets is more important than that of the form. Also, proper nouns, words having special cultural meanings and cultural background closely related to the couplets can be explained by means of notation.