On Skopos Theory And The Translation Strategies For Jane Goodall Biography

Biography is a type of literature which records a person’s life experience andpath of life. An outstanding biography shows us a totally different and colorful world.When you read a biography, you are actually concentrating on the whole lifeexperience of the protagonist’s past, and experiencing a life you have never beenthrough, which is to say, to enrich your life experience in an indirect way. A goodbiography can even inspire the whole life of its readers. The predicament and spiritualtorture throughout the life of the protagonist as well as how he/she broke through theenvironmental barriers and overcame the cowardice of human nature to pick up thecrown of life all give us the message to stay enlightened. Reading a biography is toinfiltrate ourselves into the spiritual world of the protagonist to get immersed andinfluenced so as to continuously enhance our real personalities. Jane GoodallBiography is a biography pertaining to a pioneering English primatologist, JaneGoodall. It was written by MegEilidh Greene, a biographer, telling the story of howJane Goodall became a primatologist and how she spent her days living with wildanimals.The biography not only tells how Jane Goodall loves nature and protects wildanimals, but also creates positive energy to form a harmonious relation betweenhuman beings and nature at an early age. Guided by the Skopos Theory in chaptersone to three, a specific research has been done on the translation of the text.According to Skopos Theory, translation is the cross-culture communicative activitywith an aim or purpose, which is to say, the translation aim determines the translationmethod. The relationship among the author, the translator and the receiver should becoordinated to the most extent, and the proper translation strategies and methodsshould be adopted to achieve the aim desired. In the process of analyzing andresearching the translation source text, instructed by the Skopos Theory, the translatoranalyzes the source text in four following aspects: structural feature, content feature,linguistic feature and stylistic feature. As a biography, authenticity as well asliterariness is the most significant feature. Therefore, in the process of translating, thetranslator paid due attention to these two kinds of features. Furthermore, recreationhas been made on the basis of the ST according to particular situations. The translatortries to achieve the aim of making the receiver and the readers can understand boththe ST and the TT by means of all kinds of translation strategies.