A Functionalist Approach To Metaphor Translation

Metaphor is not only a linguistic concept, but also takes on culture-specificfeature. This thesis analyzes different approaches and strategies adopted in metaphor translation from the perspective of functionalism.As the most important theory of functionalism, Skopostheorie (the theory that applies the notion of Skopos to translation) persists that the Skopos is the prime principle to determining the overall translational action. In the framework of Skopostheorie, one of the most important factors determining the purpose of a translation is the target text addressee, who is the intended receiver or audience of the target text with their culture-specific backgrounds, their expectations and their communicative needs. Furthermore, as the kernel of the functionalist theories, Skopostheorie contains three rules: the "Skopos rule", the "coherence rule" and the "fidelity rule". The "fidelity rule" is considered subordinated to "coherence rule", and both are subordinate to the "Skopos rule" which is the top-ranking rule for any translation.With the framework of Skopostheorie, this thesis attempts to explore and analyze metaphor translation in three different text varieties, namely literary works, advertisement and technical writings, and presents some possible translation methods.