A Contrastive Study Of Translation Strategies In The Two Chinese Versions Of The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

With the development of reform and opening-up process, the cultural exchangesbetween China and the foreign countries all over the world have become increasinglyfrequent and deep. A growing number of children’s literature works have beenintroduced into China, and then the children’s literature translation studies present anincreasing trend in our country. However, compared with the study on the translationof the adults’ literature, the study on the translation of the children’s literature stillremains at the edge position for the lack of theoretical guidance and a serious shortageof attention. Translation is a purposeful intercultural communication process andconsidering the particularity of the target readers, the children’s literature translationshould have a clear purpose for guidance. The Skopos Theory of the functionaltranslation is the most influential translation school in Germany since the1970s and isalso one of the most influential translation theories in the world, which is known as “apowerful team in western translation theory”. The Skopos Theory proposed by Hans J.Vermeer offers a new perspective for the translators in translation practice and alsoprovides sufficient theoretical guidance for children’s literature translation.The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is the representative novel of the famousAmerican novelist Mark Twain, and is also one of the most popular children’sliterature works throughout the world. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a purechildren’s literature for the reason that the author observes the life from theperspective of children and perfectly shows the funny moments during the risk periodof the hero Tom Sawyer and his partners in vivid language. There are several Chineseversions of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in China. This thesis takes ZhangYousong’s and Cheng Shi’s versions as the research objects and makes a contrastivestudy on the different translation strategies so as to prove that the different translationstrategies are determined by the different translation purpose.The thesis tries to make a contrastive study on the two Chinese versions of theThe Adventures of Tom Sawyer from the perspective of Skopos Theory. The studystarts from the linguistic level and the cultural level, and analyzes the corresponding translation strategies of the two Chinese versions from the phonetic, lexical andsyntactic aspects of the linguistic level and from the proverbs and idioms and theculture-loaded words of the cultural level. At the same time it discusses the guidingrole of the Skopos Theory in the translation process of the two Chinese versions.Finally, through the contrastive study, the author finds that the different translationstrategies adopted in the two Chinese versions of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer aredetermined by different translation purposes. With the guidance of certain translationpurposes and appropriate translation strategies the target texts will be successfultranslation works.