Skopos Theory In English Fiction Translation-Selected Translation Of To Sir,with Love And A Critical Commentary

Globalization greatly boosts exchanges at all levels, particularly cultures and languages, thus translating booms. Among all forms of cultural exchanges, literary works serve as the best media. In the past few decades, countless popular novels, best sellers in English have been translated into Chinese, which opens a window for Chinese readers to foreign cultures and languages, broadening their minds, enriching their inner world. Translation, however, does not only occur at the linguistic level, more importantly, it involves the decoding and encoding at the cultural level, so it is both a linguistic and cultural behavior within the confines of the source text. The cultural element involved in novels makes novel translation, an essential part of literature translation, significantly different from pragmatic translation, which does not involve too much culturally loaded expressions and aesthetic value. Based on the author’s experiences, autobiography is an author’s written expression of his/her feelings and the purpose or intention of this creation. For translators, it is their prime task to convey exactly these feelings and purpose to the target text readers while maintaining the artistic feature of the original text.This thesis, taking To Sir, With Love, an English novel published in the1959, as the research object. Written by black writer E.R.Braithwaite, who was born in Guyana,Britan,it is a heartwarming story of how a well-educated black teacher encouraged his poorly motivated and rebellious white students to pursue a positive life by his bold and unique teaching. It also reflects the racial discrimination black people were faced with in the1960s and portrays the image of a noble and glorious teacher. Hopefully this thesis shall provide new material for English black literature research, filling a blank in related research area. This thesis will focus on the difficulties the translator encountered and techniques adopted in the translation process, aiming at a tentative study of the application of Skopos theory to novel translation.The thesis consists of three parts:Part One is the original text and the translated text; Part Two is critical commentary, with a brief introduction to Skopos theory and examples from the source text to illustrate how certain techniques are applied to deal with difficulties in the translation process while Part Three serves as the conclusion.Skopos theory stands as an applicable and valuable theory in novel translation. This project will shed some lights on novel translation and hopefully encourage more translators into novel translation.