Toward A Dynamic And Functional Approach

It may be thought that the topic of translation criteria is platitudinous, but such an assumption is rather misleading. In fact, the research into this topic is far from being adequate to the actual requirements of present-day translation practice and criticism. Therefore it goes without saying that translation criteria have to be understood in a new sense and accordingly need to be re-orientated.This thesis is thus centered upon re-orientation of translation criteria, with a view to presenting a new perspective on translation criteria. It consists of five major parts. In the introductory part, it touches upon the topic of translation criteria and focuses primarily on the reason why it is necessary and imperative that translation criteria should be re-orientated in a new sense. In the second part, it offers a literature review by making a study on almost all the translation criteria in existence as well as their historical limitations in particular. The third part, which is the core of this thesis, presents a dynamic and functional approach to translation criteria by advocating the re-orientation of translation criteria on the basis of modern and contemporary translation theories (mainly the polysystem theory and the skopos theory), in order to meet the demands of translation practice and criticism in reality. The fourth part provides two illustrative case studies, which verify the main viewpoint of this thesis by demonstrating what kind of functional factors should be taken into consideration while assessing a translation. Then follows the conclusion part, which makes a summary of the central ideas of this thesis.