An Analysis Of Two Chinese Versions Of Shakespeare’s Sonnets From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

There are many different Chinese translations of Shakespeare’s sonnets and relevant research. How ever, it is scattered without systematic framework. It is still quite limited researches of translators’styles, the Crescent Moon Society, the poetry translation by the Crescent Moon Society and the sonnets translation strategies. It is also without much attention. It doesn’t match the blooming translation practice.In-depth study and comparative study of different translations should be very rare in the Shakespeare’s sonnets study. It is even much more rare to study the Crescent Moon Society’s translation by applying Skopos Theory.The author analyzes two different styles of Shakespeare’s sonnet translations by applying Functionalist Theory. One translator is Liang Shih-chiu, and the other is Bian Zhilin. The theoretical framework is Skopos Theory. The author tends to research and reveal the aspects and influences of Shakespeare’s sonnet translation. These two translators lived in the same era, influenced by New Culture Movement and belonged to Crescent Moon Society. The thesis mainly aims at how their translation purposes influenced their translation method and strategies, which belong to translator’s style.Skopos Rule, Coherence Rule, Fidelity Rule and "Function plus Loyalty" Rule are general direction of this thesis when comparing Liang Shih-chiu and Bian Zhilin’s translations. The comparative study also includes comparisons of detailed words and strategies, so as to reveal how the translation serves the purpose.Through choosing different types of works to translate and corresponding translating strategies, the translators strive to achieve their Skopos. Whether the translator achieved his Skopos becomes the yardstick whether the translation is successful or not. At the same time, the role played by target text addressees is very important to the translators. In the author’s opinion, the theory and the principle of Skopos Theory is a good interpretation of the reasons for the existence of two distinct versions of translation and again confirms the "purpose determines the strategy" rule in translation. Two masters have reached their overall translation purposes, and their translations also give us a more comprehensive reference of evaluation on translations. The author hopes that the detailed case study of these two masters can give translators some suggestions on how to choose an appropriate translation strategy in sonnet translation, which may be helpful for future research of translator’s style as well.