On The Compensation For The English Translation Of Tao Te Ching From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

Tao Te Ching is a representative work of Taoist school. It was written by Lao-tzu, the founder of Taoist school and it records the main thoughts of his. It has a profound influence on the development of Chinese philosophy and the formation of Chinese character and personality. As an important part of Chinese classics, it has always been attached with great importance in Chinese history of thoughts and literature.Therefore, it goes without saying that the English translation of it has an extreme importance for the dissemination of Chinese culture and the establishment of international image of China.But its translational work meets great challenges because of its ancientry and unique cultureloaded language.According to Skopos theory, the whole process of the translation act is decided by the translation aims behind, that is, the end justifies the means. And the process of translation act includes the type of the target text, the translation methods, and the choice of translation strategies.Skopos theory prefers to adequacy rather than equivalence, insisting that the equivalence is just to meet some certain aim, and therefore equivalence is not the only standard for translation. It also emphasizes the importance of the relationship between the translator and the receivers. In short,Skopos theory puts forward a new perspective for translation critics. It provides theoretical ground and basis for some translation practices which go against some translation standards but are proved to be successful in practice, and it also opens up a new dimension for the exploration of translation study.During the study of two English versions of Tao Te Ching, the impact of the translation skopos, target readers, and historical and cultural background of translation on the translation act are analyzed, which helps to come to a more comprehensive and more reasonable judgment to the adopted translation strategies for compensation. Also, it emphasizes the study of different translation strategies adopted by different translators at the consideration of different aims and different target receivers as well as the compensation effect achieved in different degrees. This thesis studies the compensation strategies adopted in the two versions from three aspects, namely,meaning, poetics and cultural level, and concludes that major strategies are literal translation,annotation, interpretation, substitution, generalization, parallel arrangement construction or a combination of two strategies together. In general, both translation versions have met the need of their target receivers, and have achieved inter-cultural or inner-cultural communication. They haveoffered great help and positive reference for the further practice of English translation of Tao Te Ching.In short, this thesis, under the guidance of Skopos theory of German Functionalist School,studies the translation compensation in two English versions of Tao Te Ching, discusses the translation strategies applied for the purpose of compensation, and justifies these strategies through the perspective of Skopos theory. In the end, this thesis summarizes some main strategies that merit attention for the translation of Tao Te Ching.