A Study Of The Chinese Version Of A Thousand Splendid Suns From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

Hans Vermeer first put forward Skopos theory in the 1970s.After continuous development,it has formulated a detailed theoretical system and became the most important component of German functionalist translation theory.A Thousand Splendid Suns is the second book of Khaled Hosseini.He established his fame on the publication of his first book,The Kite Runner.A Thousand Splendid Suns has received significant praise from literary critics across the world.There are two Chinese versions of A Thousand Splendid Suns.The former is the simplified Chinese version Can Lan Qian Yang(《灿烂千阳》)by Li Jihong in Chinese Mainland;the latter is Li Jingyi’s traditional Chinese version made in Taiwan which is also named as Can Lan Qian Yang(《灿烂千阳》).Therefore,most of the studies made on this work are from literary perspective,but rarely from the perspective of translation,not to mention the translation studies from the aspect of Skopos theory.So in order to get a more comprehensive study of the original work and Li Jihong’s simplified Chinese version,this thesis compares the original work with Li Jihong’s version on the basis of Skopos theory and studies Li Jihong’s translation strategies and methods.With the aim of preserving the cultural information of the original work, translator Li Jihong adopts foreignization and domestication to convey the cultural information. Translator Li Jihong tries every means to make the target text smooth and natural such as rearranging sentence order, dividing long sentences into short ones and using four-character words where necessary in the rendition of A Thousand Splendid Suns. In terms of fidelity rule, translator Li Jihong tries to keep the rhetoric devices in the original work, such as the use of parallelism, simile, etc.The detailed comparative analysis shows that translator Li Jihong adopts corresponding translation strategies and methods to achieve the translation skopos in the translation of A Thousand Splendid Suns. Consequently, the target text is intelligible and readable to Chinese readers and it has introduced some cultural information to Chinese readers. What’s more, the core part of Skopos theory, translation Skopos guides and determines translation strategies and methods, is once again validated. It is also confirmed that Skopos theory can be used to guide literary translation.