Comparison Of English Translations Of Zhang Dai’s Essays From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

Based on the functionalist Skopos theory, this thesis will discuss how Victor H.Mair, Richard Strassberg, David Pollard, Yang Ye and Lin Yutang adopt differenttranslation approaches and methodology to achieve their respective translationpurposes with the guidance of their translation brief. There are five chapters in total:Chapter I provides a brief introduction to Zhang Dai and his literary writings, andthen elaborates the research significance and research methodology of this thesis.Chapter II gives a brief discussion on the theoretic framework of this research–Skopos theory–by giving a literature review of Reiss, Vermeer, Mantarri and Nord’works on functionalism and Skopos theory. The three rules–Skopos rule,intracoherence rule and intercoherence rule are further presented.Chapter III conducts a comparative analysis on the differences of translationpurposes and translation brief among the five translators.Chapter IV carries out detailed textual analysis and discusses how the fivetranslators adopt different methods and approaches to realize their purposes. Thischapter is further divided into two parts: the first part focuses on the differences as tohow they handle cultural-specific words under the theoretic framework ofintracoherence rule; the second part explores what the translations share in commonfrom the perspective of intercoehrence rule.Chapter V draws a conclusion of this thesis: the translation approaches andmethods adopted by the five translators meet the needs of their respective purposes.Their translations will provide guidance for transmission of Zhang Dai’s literature tothe rest of the world.