A Study Of Translation Of Chinese Characteristic Words From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory With A Case Of The Governance Of China

Skopos Theory came into being in Germany in the 1970 s.Reisse,Vermeer,Manttari,and Nord are representatives of Functionalist Skopos Theory.Sokpos Theory is a key part of Functionalist Skopos Theory.Skopos Theory viewed translation as a purposeful human activity.The theory highlighted that translation strategy was strongly influenced by translation purpose.Owing to different translation purposes,translators can flexibly choose translation strategies to achieve cross-cultural purpose.The same source text may have different versions of target renderings.As a modern theory of translation in western nation,Skopos Theory was a great breakthrough.It broke the theoretical limitations of functional equivalence theory in the language.Skopos Theory gives a new perspective for translators in the translation practice which is more instructional to choose translation methods.Chinese characteristic words cover various fields in China's history,culture,economy and politics,etc.These words have profound cultural connotations.It is not easy to translate Chinese characteristic words properly.There are a lot of factors influencing the accurate renderings of Chinese characteristic words,such as cultural factors and political factors,etc.Translators play an important role in the translation process,and it requires translators' high bilingual ability.Translators' ability influences the quality of renderings.Since reform and opening-up,China has made great achievement in the fields in economy,politics and diplomacy.China has been more and more integrating into the world.With deepening international communication,it is important for the world to know about China's current situation.The Governance of China is a typical political text and publicity materials.It is regarded as the source of authoritative information on China's current situation.It also is viewed as an important channel for the world to learn about contemporary China,so Chinese characteristic words in The Governance of China serve as subject of the study with the theoretical guidance of Skopos Theory.Thirty-six typical Chinese characteristic words were selected as the objects of case study and translation strategy in each example will be analyzed in The Governance of China.By means of text analysis,the study probes into the five translation strategies of Chinese characteristic words in The Governance of China and answers the question: what and how the translation strategies are used from the perspective of Skopos Theory,namely,free translation,literal translation,literal translation plus explanation,substitution and adaptation.The number of the usage of free translation and literal translation accounts for high proportion of the total.Due to the remarkable differences between English and Chinese,the employment of free translation or literal translation alone can not achieve the translation purpose.The relationship between free translation and literal translation is auxiliary to each other rather than opposite.Only the appropriate choice of translation strategy can produce good renderings to achieve cross-cultural communication purpose.