A Study On The Translation Of My Life As Emperor From The Perspective Of Skopostheorie

My Life as Emperor, a new historical novel written by Su Tong, was firstpublished in the journal Flower City in1992. The entertaining plot and well-roundedcharacters of the novel have made it very popular among readers. The novel wastranslated into English by Howard Goldblatt, a well-known sinologist, in2005. Thetranslation is known as fluent, readable, as well as faithful and has attractedenormous attention from many major media like The New Yorker since itspublication.Skopostheorie, a relatively new translation theory, was developed in Germanyin the1970s. According to Skopostheorie, the translation skopos determinestranslation strategies and methods. Furthermore, the translation should accord withthe three important rules of Skopostheorie, namely, skopos rule, coherence rule, andfidelity rule. The theory breaks with the traditional equivalence-based translationtheory and brings about a new perspective for the study of translation theory andpractice.Guided by Skopostheorie, this thesis analyzes the translation of My Life asEmperor from the three important rules. The research objectives are, firstly, toexplore how the three rules are reflected and secondly, to summarize whattranslation methods and techniques are adopted in the translation of My Life asEmperor. The study shows that through various translation methods and techniques,Howard Goltblatt realizes the translation skopos of enhancing the readability andfluency of the rendering to make it well-received among its target readers.Furthermore, the rendering well realizes the three rules of Skopostheorie. First, thetranslation of the culture-loaded words reflects the requirements of the skopos rulesince they are translated as more readable and easier to understand throughtranslation methods like addition and liberal translation. Second, by analyzing thechoice of words, sentence and text structuring in the translation, the author has foundthat the translator makes the translation in line with the English expression habits in all the three levels so that the translation is comprehensible in the target textenvironment, which reflects the requirements of the coherence rule. Last, the authorhas found that the translator exactly conveys the contextual meaning of certainwords and the original tone of some utterance in a way that is in compliance withEnglish expression habits, which reflects the requirements of the fidelity rule.