A Study Of Ezra Pound’s English Version Of Lun Yu From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

Skopos theory (Skopostheorie) comes from German functionalist approaches.It is the most influential theory among functionalist theories. Vermeer raised andelaborated it during1970s to1980s. According to Skopos theory, translation is anintentional, conscious cross-cultural communicative activity; translation processshould be carried out in light of Skopos Rule, namely, translation process, result andstrategies all depend on translation purpose. Skopos Rule serves as the prior rule inall translation activities; it’s an overwhelmingly fundamental rule. Skopos theoryquestions the traditional “faithful”,“equivalent” standards, and defines author,translator, source text, target text in another way, creating a special and brand-newsituation for translation studies.Based on Skopos theory, the author of the thesis is going to analyze TheAnalects of Ezra Pound in two aspects: domestication and foreignization. First theauthor shall take an overall review of the theory and expound it necessarily. Thenunder the theoretical framework, the author shall further analyze the above twoaspects in word, sentence mode, stylistical feature, political and cultural elementswith a descriptive analysis approach. By this contrastive study of the version ofPound and that of D.C. Lau, a commonly considered “faithful” one, it can be easilyfound that Pound’s version is endowed with distinctive artistic characteristics, whichare brought by his poetic or artistic ideas and political aspiration.Through the analysis of Pound’s translation strategies in The Analects, it canbe proved that his translation has achieved the target, so it is “appropriate”. Thisoffers us a new angle of view for understanding and evaluating Pound’s version, andalso enhances our understanding and application of Skopos theory, which shows thereciprocal relationship between translation theory and practice, too.