A Study On English-chinese Translation Of Motion Events In English Novels From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

Previous studies on language typology have revealed that motion events expressions vary with languages.This thesis explores the Chinese translation of motion events by taking70 randomly-chosen samples from the English novel The Call of the Wild and its two Chinese versions,which are respectively translated by Liu Dajie & Zhang Menglin and Liu Rongyue,as materials,aiming to find out the characteristic motion event expressions in Chinese translation from the perspective of Skopos theory.The focus of Skopos theory is not whether the target text is equivalent to the source text,but whether translators can choose the appropriate translation strategy according to different contextual factors in the process of translation,based on the expected function of the target text.Regarding motion event expressions,satellite-framed languages have a larger and more diverse manner verb lexicon,and manner verbs in satellite-framed languages are more expressive.In addition,they are more likely to use satellites to express path information.In contrast,verb-framed languages express manners only when needed,and they are more likely to use motion verbs without any ground information than satellite-framed languages do.It is found that both Chinese translations embody the core principle of Skopos theory: the purpose determines translation strategies.In order to achieve the translation purpose of the novel,the translators flexibly select the translation strategies for motion event components according to the different situations:(1)When translating first-tier manner verbs,translators may use literal translation to restore the original meaning,or adopt shift as translation strategy to produce more natural and readable texts;during the translation process,when dealing with second-tier manner verbs including complex manner information,translators tend to compensate extra adverbials to improve the fidelity of the translation due to the lack of manner verbs in Chinese lexicon;translators are very likely to keep the manner description of the source text,and adjustment can be made according to the Chinese language habits,in order to produce smooth and faithful translations.(2)Due to the differences between Chinese and English in encoding path information,Chinese translators may choose translation strategies(lateralization,omission or shift)according to the translation purpose.(3)While translating ground components,compared with verb-framed language users' tendency of reduction,Chinese translators tend to retain them,or omit them according to the need of readability of the target text.From the translation materials collected in this research,it can beobserved that the Chinese translations do not fully inherit the characteristics of English,which is a typical satellite-framed language,which is consistent with the Skopos theory's purpose-oriented rather than source-oriented thinking.