Report On The Translation Of Plain Fishing

This report is based on the translation of Plain Fishing by Frank R. Stockton.The translation practice is under the guidance of Skopos Theory with a focus on thecognitive features of children and the characteristics of children’s literature. According toSkopos Theory, as a kind of human activity with specific purposes, translation should putthe purposes, the skopos, in the first place. Instead of advocating establishing formallinguistic equivalence between the source text and the target text, Skopos Theoryemphasizes that the translation methods and strategies should be determined by theintended functions of the target text in the target culture and by the expectation of the targetreaders.After providing an introduction to the translation project, the novelist and the sourcetext, the translator elaborates the main ideas of Skopos Theory, focusing on the applicationof its three concerned rules, the Skopos Rule, the Coherence Rule and the Fidelity Rule, tothe translation practice of Plain Fishing. In the main part of the report, with a series ofdetailed analyses, the translator demonstrates that Skopos Theory can provide goodtheoretical guidance for the translation of children’s literature from the levels of lexicology,syntax and textuality. The report also offers a few suggestions regarding the principles andstrategies of the translation of children’s literature in China.