A Comparative Study On The Two English Versions Of Shu Pu From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

Calligraphy has consistently occupied a preeminent place among the visual arts in China.Artists,scholars,and critics have elevated it to a high level of sophistication,unique in the history of world civilization.In recent years,as the cross-cultural communication has developed rapidly,Chinese calligraphy has been gradually arousing the attention of Westerners.Starting in the second century A.D.,many theoretical works on calligraphy have been produced in China.Shu Pu by Sun Guoting,completed in 687,has been regarded as the most significant one because it deals with calligraphy more comprehensively and perceptively than any other works written before or at his times.Shu Pu does not only boast the literary value but also the cultural value,therefore,its translation not only promotes the development of cross-cultural communication but also disseminates Chinese calligraphy to the world.Skopos theory is an important part of the German Functionalist Approach to Translation.It includes the skopos rule,the coherence rule and the fidelity rule,with the skopos rule being the primary one – the end justifies the means,which provides a new perspective for the translation practice and study.After reviewing the history of Chinese calligraphy and relevant studies on the translations of Shu Pu,this thesis,selecting 26 examples,takes skopos theory as its theoretical framework to study the two English versions,namely,Sun Dayu's On the Fine Art of Chinese Calligraphy and Treatise on Calligraphy translated by Chang Ch'ung-ho and Hans Frankel.It is pointed that translators choose different translation strategies due to their different translation purposes during the translation process,so as to provide a feasible and effective guiding principle for the translation of Shu Pu and other classical works on Chinese calligraphy.Through a comparative study,the thesis arrives at the following conclusion: Sun Dayu mainly employs the domestication strategy,and his “skopos” is to attract more attention of Western readers to the traditional Chinese culture and bring pleasures of reading to them.Chang Ch'ung-ho and Hans Frankel mainly adopt the foreignization strategy and their target readers are mostly the students of Chinese calligraphy and students of Chinese painting and literature,thus they hope that their translation can precisely and faithfully transmit the connotations of traditional Chinese culture.Although the two English versions are different in styles,their functions are in line with translators' purposes respectively,which realize the function of cross-cultural communication.