On Metaphor Translation In The Phoenix Returns To Its Nest From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

In2010Jingju has been rated by United Nations Educational Scientific andCulture Organization as Oral and Non-material Heritage of Mankind, which witnessedthe trend of Jingju going abroad in the past few decades. The non-verbal form ofJingju performance has transferred great oriental cultural features. The language ofJingju is beautiful and concise and contains a great many metaphors. However, thereexist a large number of problems in Jingju metaphor translation.The Skopos theory holds the conviction that translation is an action with Skoposbased on the source text. During the translation, the Skopos is expected to be theprimary factor taken into account. This theory extends the confines of translation,breaking the limitation of language shift and source text. It expands the influence ofthe target culture towards translation activity and improves the status of translators.Vermeer, who brings up Skopos theory, also comes up with the three rules of theSkopos rule, the coherence rule and the fidelity rule.This thesis, guided by Vermeer’s Skopos theory, conducts a qualitative andquantitative research on the metaphorical phenomena in Elizabeth Whichmann’sversion of a famous Jingju The Phoenix Returns to Its Nest from the perspective of thethree rules of Skopos theory. Led by Peter Newmark’s metaphor translation theory, theauthor collects metaphors in the scripts of both Chinese and English version of ThePhoenix Returns to Its Nest and classifies them into proper categories, aiming to findout the appropriate methods for Jingju metaphor translation.First, the author covers thoroughly the metaphorical phenomena in The PhoenixReturns to Its Nest published in1986by New World Press. Then the152metaphorsare compared by the author with their corresponding English translation and classifiesinto categories according to Peter Newmark’s seven metaphor translation methods. Ithas been turned out that only33metaphors in Elizabeth Wichmann’s version aretranslated with reproducing the original metaphorical image in target language;3metaphors are processed with maintaining the original metaphorical image plus sense; the rest116all replace or abandon the original images. At last, the author analyzes theabove phenomena with exemplifications. Major findings are concluded as followed:First, Elizabeth Wichmann is a foreign advocator of Jingju, so the skopos of her Jingjutranslation is to guarantee the fluency and performability of the translated version;second, the way Elizabeth Wichmann translates metaphors in Jingju fulfills the skoposof the translation practice, which proves the feasibility of the Skopos theory guidingJingju metaphor translation; third, in Jingju metaphor translation with the skopos ofperformability, four of Peter Newmark’s metaphor translation methods can be adoptedas referential methods, including reproducing the same metaphorical image in targetlanguage, replacing the same image in the source language with a standard targetlanguage, deletion and conversion of metaphor to sense; last but not least, the authorbased on this thesis proposes that Chinese culture implied in Jingju script has beenabandoned to a large extent in guaranteeing the performability of Jingju metaphortranslation. Upon the author’s view it should be emphasized on both the performingintegrity and cultural preservation in Jingju metaphor translation. One play should becompanied with two translation versions not only to fulfill the performablibity but alsoto guarantee the Chinese cultural transmission.