The Skopostheorie And Its Application In Fairy Tale Translation

By having a study on the two Chinese versions of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as a case, this thesis aims to (1) show its readers that fairy tale translation could, and should be under the guidance of Skopostheorie; (2) Skopostheorie is a theory with practical instructive function which enables us to have a more objective study of fairy tale translation activities from a new perspective.The case study of this thesis is arranged in a contrastive way. The author first presents the purposes of the two translators in translating the tale according to their respective situations. Then a contrastive study is conducted about how the two translators transfer the culture information, how they achieve the inter-textual coherence and intra-textual coherence according to the important rules within the framework of Skopostheorie.This thesis consists of 5 chapters. Chapter I is an introduction to the thesis and literature review. A theoretical framework is then presented in Chapter II, including a brief introduction to Skopostheorie, the major rules of Skopostheorie and the dialectical relationship of them, and two couples of relations. In the following chapter, the features and function of fairy tales are studied in detail to show that Skopostheorie is, and should be, able to be used to guide the fairy tale translation. Chapter IV is the most important part of this thesis in which a detailed case analysis is made about the translation of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. In this case study, the author analyzes the two versions from four aspects: the Skopos Rule, the Coherence Rule, the Fidelity Rule and the Loyalty Principle. Chapter V is the conclusion of this thesis in which the author gives some suggestion on how to achieve a successful fairy tale translation. It also points out that Skopostheorie is an efficient and practical theory for translation practice, criticism and training. By having this case study, the author shows his opinion that translators should always bear Skopos in mind in translating fairy tales. And it also proves that Skopostheorie approach can be employed in translation to analyze and solve practical issues.