A Study Of Two English Versions Of Haoqiu Zhuan From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

In the vast ocean of Chinese literature,Haoqiu Zhuan is one of the Novels of Genius and Beauty(才子佳人小说)in Ming and Qing Dynasties.It may not be regarded as a masterpiece,however,as the first Chinese novel to be translated into western languages and published,it has roused enormous repercussions in European countries,Haoqiu Zhuan takes a very important position in Chinese and Western literary translation history.Haoqiu Zhuan contains eighteen chapters,describes a love story between two outstanding young couple who fight for their true love,it reveals the evil force of ancient feudal society,advocates the feudal ethical principles and the Confucian ethical code.The thesis will carry out a study of two most famous English versions of Haoqiu Zhuan from the perspective of skopos theory. One is Thomas Percy’s Hau Kiou Choaan,published in 1761. The other is John Francis Davis’ The Fortunate Union, published in1829. Skopos theory is the core theory of German functional translation theory, it believes that “the prime principle that determines any translation process is the skopos of the overall translational action.” That means the translation strategies is determined by its translation skopos. Even towards the same source text, different translators who hold different translation skopos will adopt different translation strategies to achieve their translation skopos.Previous researches on Haoqiu Zhuan and its two English versions have mainly been carried out from the perspective of their propagation process and influences abroad, from the compilation and writing process and the backgrounds of two translators. Since these two translators were born in different eras, and influenced by different social, historical and culture factors, each of them has different translation skopos that influences the adoption of translation strategies. As for Percy, who was not very familiar with Chinese language,thought that this novel advocates the Chinese feudal ethical principles and presents a general view of ancient China. He hoped that his translation version could serve as a bridge to give western readers a deeper understanding of ancient China. Therefore, he adopted the free translation and the deletion strategies to delete some contents, re-ordered the chapters,which is easier for the target readers to comprehend the ideals of his translated versions.While for Davis, who mastered Chinese language and culture well, admired the literal merit of classical Chinese novels, intended to deliver the literary merit of the original to target readers. During the translation process, he mainly adopted the literal translation strategy sothat his version would strictly follow the chapter order of the original and maintains the literature features of classical Chinese chapter novels. Faithfulness to the original is one of the biggest merits of his translation.In this thesis, the author adopts two methodologies: textual analysis and exemplification, focuses on the translation skopos of these two English versions of Haoqiu Zhuan and the translation strategies applied to achieve their translation skopos, tries to prove that different translation skopos will influent the choice of translation strategies of these two translations.