On Sidney Shapiro’s Translation Of Rhymes Of Li Youcai-from The Perspective Of The Skopos Theory

Rhymes of Li Youcai, is a novella written by Zhao Shuli in1943. It mainly tells a story about the struggle of the peasants against the landlord. As the representative of the Potato School, it is of high literary value. Since its publication, it has been translated into many languages and republished several times. Sidney Shapiro, who lives in China, translated it into English in1950. Since then, it has received warm welcome in the western world and attracted many foreign researchers and scholars who study Chinese literature. Previous studies, at home and abroad, mainly concentrate on Rhymes of Li Youcai itself, such as the analysis of the language style, especially the role of the thirteen rhymes, the portrait of negative and positive characters and the literary influence of the novella. However, few researchers focus their attention on the translation of the novella.Based on the characteristics of the source text, the skopos theory is selected. First, for novel translation, culture transfer is one of the most important purposes in translation process. For culture transfer, the translation of culture-loaded words is of vital importance. As the representative of regional literature, there are a lot of culture-loaded words in the novella. How to translate the culture-loaded words and transfer the Chinese culture is the first point in the thesis. Therefore, the skopos rule is selected to analyze the translation of culture-loaded words, especially the words concerned with material culture and social culture. As for social culture, the translation of Chinese measurements and the translation of appellation have been concentrated. From the perspective of the skopos rule, the translator mainly retains the local characteristics of the source text, such as transliterating the culture-loaded words plus notes. In this way, the purpose of culture transfer is achieved. Second, there are many geographical and cultural differences between different areas. As for regional literature, notes are indispensable for the reader in other areas. How the translator deals with the notes in the source text is the second focus in the thesis. Therefore, the coherence rule is selected to analyze the translation of notes in the source text and the addition of notes in the target text, because the deletion or addition of notes will definitely influence the coherence of the text. According to the target text, the original notes no longer exist. They are either omitted to be brief or inserted in the text because they have closer relationships with the context. The purpose of the addition of notes by Sidney Shapiro is to explain the connotative meaning of the source text and to guarantee the coherence of the target text. During the process, two concepts have been put forward by the author, that is, overt notes and covert notes, which are quite creative. Third, in Rhymes of Li Youcai, there are thirteen rhymes. As a variation of poems, the translation of the thirteen rhymes is the third focus in the thesis. The best way to judge a good poem translation is to see whether it has faithfully transferred the content and form of the original text. Therefore, the fidelity rule is selected to analyze the translation of the thirteen rhymes. Generally speaking, the target text is faithful to the original one. However, there are some exceptions, for example, the five lines of the original rhyme is converted to four lines and the direction of "from west to east" is translated to "from east to west" for the target reader’s sake. After the analysis of translation of three main features in the novella from the perspective of the skopos theory, the author shifts her attention to the translation methods adopted by Sidney Shapiro in Rhymes of Li Youcai. According to Vermeer, the purpose is the most important factor that will decide the translation strategies and methods. In the target text, the same word can be differently translated because of context.Through the case study of English version of Rhymes of Li Youcai, it once again proves that the skopos rule can be applied to the analysis of literary translation. Moreover, more researches need to be done to prove that the skopos theory can also guide the translation of other literary works in regional literature.