A Study Of Chinese-English Translation Of Medical Device Instructions From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

With the fast development of global economy in the21st century, in international market, there has been an increasing demand for Chinese medical devices owing to the repaid aging of the world population and increasing longevity in recent years. Some countries are wholly reliant on imports, which represents a vast potential market and golden opportunity for Chinese medical device exporters. Medical device industry is regarded as the "sunrise industry".With the deepening globalization, China has developed unprecedented interactions of trade with various countries and regions in the world.In order to attract attentions of foreign consumers and take a dominant position in international market, besides the excellent quality of medical devices itself, the quality of its instruction has a forthright impact on consumers’ purchase desire and consumers’ life security. Because an instruction of high quality can not only offer detailed and precise information of the device, but also takes into consideration the feelings of the target readers and enables them to understand the medical device and trust the product. It is helpful to optimize brand image. More vital fact is that even a tiny mistake in the translation of instructions may lead to serious consequences, which will threaten consumers’ health and safety. Therefore, the study of Chinese-English translation of medical device instruction is of great realistic significance and practical value.Skopos Theory was raised in1978by Han J. Vermeer, a scholar of German functionalist translation theory. This theory pointed out that the major task of translation is to fulfill materialization of the functions that the target text is intended to realize in the target culture. Meanwhile, it argues that translation is a certain action with a specific purpose.In the light of translation purposes, the translation activity tries to relate the source text with the target text somehow and to remove cultural barriers to achieve an effective communication purpose. The two texts should not be completely equivalent. Vermeer’s Skopos Theory consists of three rules:the skopos rule, the coherence rule and the fidelity rule. In terms of Skopos Theory, this study believes that the fulfillment of the intended purposes of the target text should be the dominating principle for translation. This thesis aims to analyze Skopos Theory and suggests the application of Skopos Theory to the practice of translating medical device instructions from Chinese to English.Medical device instruction, as a practical type of writing, is strongly functional and purposeful, which aims to make foreign consumers to understand and become familiar with the cautions, operation, indications and contraindications, so as to stimulate their desire to purchase, and ultimately enable them to take action to purchase. Therefore, the translation should be smooth and readable, otherwise may cause encumbrance. This thesis argues that the translator should be faithful to the original, but not rigidly adhere to the original. The translator should take linguistic differences and cultural barriers into consideration, adopt appropriate translation strategies according to target language rules. Only in this way will it be possible to realize the purposes of medical device instructions. The previous study in this field only focuses on the lexical, grammatical and stylistic features of the instructions, but lack of systematic theoretical support "and scientific research method. On that, account, this thesis studies the translation of medical device instructions from a new perspective---Skopos Theory by proving with large amounts of real examples and concludes that Skopos Theory is feasible to the study of such instructions with definite functions and purposes.According to the design of this thesis, it consists of five chapters in all. Chapter One is the introduction. This chapter is concerned with the background of the research, the aims and significance, methodology and the overall structure of the thesis. Chapter Two is literature review. It first introduces definitions of related terms; second it offers an introduction to Vermeer’s Skopos Theory including its origin, development and breakthroughs; third it presents the introduction of medical device instructions, including classifications, structures, features and functions. The last is the previous studies on translation of product instructions from the perspective of Skopos Theory. Chapter Three is the theoretical framework for the research. It covers the major concepts of Skopos theory and the three rules of Skopos Theory and their relationship. Chapter Four is the highlight of the study. In a pretty clear logic order, this chapter introduces four parts step by step. First, it discusses the current problems existing in the translation of medical device instruction. Second, it investigates the underlying reasons of the problems. Third, it is the application of three rules, namely, the skopos rule, the coherence rule and the fidelity rule to translation of medical device instructions. After a though analysis, it proposes three suggested strategies for the translation of medical device instructions. Chapter Five is the conclusion, contains an overview of the previous chapters, the major findings of the study, the implications and specific limitations and several particular suggestions for future studies.Further researches on Skopos Theory and more attention to English translation of Chinese medical devices instruction are very helpful to develop the translation theory and dissemination of Chinese medical devices. It is hoped that this thesis can provide some reference and inspiration for more exploration in the future.