Reevaluation Of Shifts In Literary Translation:a Skopostheorie Perspective

As the core theory of German functionalism school, Skopostheorie introduces the concept of "Skopos" into translation and mainly presents three rules:Skopos rule, coherence rule and fidelity rule. Among them, the top-ranking rule is Skopos rule: purposes determine strategies in translation. Skopostheorie focuses on the fulfillment of translation purposes rather than the unconditional faithfulness to source text (ST). According to this theory, ST is no longer the most important standard but just an offer of information. Therefore, this theory raises the possibilities of translation, expands the range of strategies that could be used in translation, and provides the theoretical basis for the flexible use of multiple strategies in the translation process.Shift is regarded as the core of translation activities. Undoubtedly, shifts are inevitable in translation due to the differences between source language (SL) and target language (TL), but in some cases, the translator would consciously make some shifts in target text (TT) in order to achieve specific purposes. Therefore, to analyze shifts from the perspective of Skopostheorie may bring some enlightenment to translation studies.As Skopostheorie, in a sense, overthrows traditional viewpoints on translation, it is inevitably attacked by some critical schools. Any theory surely deserves criticisms, but the present author finds that some criticisms against Skopostheorie are not proper. For this reason, this thesis also makes a succinct analysis of these criticisms. In addition, it also conducts tentative discussions on Skopos and methods in literary translation. Finally, the thesis selects some examples from literary translations, categorizes them, and conducts a detailed analysis based on Skopostheorie. It finds that these shifts are usually bestowed with some translation purposes, and that these shifts play a crucial role in achieving the specific purposes of literary translation.