On The Translation Of Quotations In Biographical Literature From The Perspective Of The Skopos Theory

THE MANTLE OF COMMAND,a biographical text describing the history of the Second World War,has been chosen as a translation practice task.The source text contains a large number of leaders' and senior officers' notes,diaries and other materials from external sources.Due to the differences in language and culture,the accuracy of the quotation translation will directly affect the readers' understanding of the original text.Therefore,the translation of the quotations has been focused upon.The Skopos theory has been adopted to guide the translation practice and research.First of all,the source text was analyzed.It was found that the quotations were not only to provide information but also to express intentions.Then translation strategies were probed into by taking consideration of different types and different purposes in the light of the Skopos theory.To achieve good quality,it was found that the translation of quotations should obey the following principles: 1.the purposes of the quotations should be embodied in the translation;2.the original format of the quotations should better be preserved;3.the language should conform to the identities of characters.When dealing with specific quotations,various translation techniques like elaborations,notes,literal translations and liberal translations were chosen.The study shows that the quality of the translation of quotations bears heavily on the overall quality.