An Analysis Of The Chinese Version Of A Song Of Ice And Fire:a Game Of Thrones From Skopos Perspective

As globalization becomes prevalent, more and more foreign literary works are coming to Chinese readers’ attention. A Song of Ice and Fire, a series of epic fantasy novels written by American novelist and screenwriter George R. R. Martin, has won a high popularity because of its unique structure, the poetic vision, numerous twists and turns in the plot and beautiful, vivid language.Skopos theory is a concept from the field of translation studies. It provides an insight into the nature of translation as a purposeful activity, which is directly applicable to every translation project. In skopos theory, the function of a translation is dependent on the knowledge, expectations, values and norms of the target readers, who are again influenced by the situation they are in and by the culture.. This thesis mainly takes the Chinese translation of A Song of Ice and Fire: A Game of Thrones as a sample for case study and analyzes the characteristics of the original text and the strategies the translators used correspondingly from the perspective of Skopos theory. The thesis also points out the successes and inadequacies of the translation and gives advice for improvement.Although a large multitude of research has been dedicated to translation activity from the perspective of Skopos theory, the research on the Chinese translation of A Song of Ice and Fire: A Game of Thrones from the perspective of Skopos theory is untouched. This is the innovation of the thesis. After the analysis and case study, this thesis finds it feasible to use Skopos theory as the theoretical framework to guide the translation of the novel.