The Translation Of The Scholars From The Perspective Of The Functional Approaches

Functionalist translation theory which was brought forward by Hans J. Vermeer and Christiane Nord in the 1980s is a practical and useful theory for the translation and research of practical texts. It says that a translation action is determined by its Skopos, that is, the end justifies the means. In most cases, the Skopos or purpose is more than one. The translators need to choose the dominant one and follow the demands to make translational actions more efficient. The author tries to combine functional translation approaches with The Scholars translated by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang, and makes a descriptive analysis of the application of Skopos theory to the translation of The Scholars. The thesis attempts to testify the theory can be applied to the translation of The Scholars.The Scholars is one of the first-rate Chinese classic works. It depicts a genre picture of the scholars in Ming and Qing Dynasty, their lives, their experience, their official career and ideality. The Yangs are very fond of ancient Chinese literary and want to make the world know much about The Scholars by translating it into English. The English version is very successful as it keeps the traditional culture of the original and within the scope of the target text readers'acceptance.Through the survey of the experience and translation view of the Yangs, the author finds that the Yangs are very fond of Chinese classical works and Chinese traditional culture. He claims that the translator should be loyal to the core of Chinese culture, and to the spirit of Chinese civilization. Therefore, by the various translational strategies, the Yangs reproduced the traditional culture of the original in the target text in the process of translating The Scholars, which can be explained by Skopos theory, that is, the end justifies the means.On the basis of these researches, the author points out that Skopos theory can explain the translation strategies adopted in the English version of The Scholars. Furthermore, taking the address terms and idioms as the illustration, the author compares the original and its English version and finds out that the Yangs mainly adopt documentary translation while instrumental translation as supplement on the basis of the cohesion and acceptance of the target text.The thesis testifies that functionalist translation theory can be applied to The Scholars, which can provide a theoretical basis for translators in the process of translating literary works and wish to contribute a little bit to this field of research.