A Study On Li Wenjun’s Translation Of The Secret Garden From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

In the late 1970 s, Hans Vermeer, the German scholar, put forward Skopos Theory. In the viewpoint of Sopos Theory, all translation action is determined by its purpose and the translator is influenced by the translation purpose. Skopos Theory has three rules: skopos rule, coherence rule and fidelity rule, and skopos rule is the primary principle.The Secret Garden is a novel for children. It was written by Frances Hodgson Burnett, an English writer. It achieves great success. What’s more, it is considered as a landmark in the development of children literature. Li Wenjun, the Chinese translator, translated this novel in his late years.This thesis takes the method of case study to make an analysis on Li Wenjun’s translation of The Secret Garden from the perspective of Skopos Theory. This thesis analyzes how Li Wenjun’s translation of The Secret Garden conforms to three rules of Skopos Theory and what translation methods are employed in Li Wenjun’s version of The Secret Garden.The thesis analyses Li Wenjun’s translation from three rules of Skopos Theory. Firstly, it makes an analysis on the target reader and purpose of Li Wenjn’s translation. Li Wenjun aims at conveying the optimistic idea to Chinese children, bringing happiness to children and developing their language learning. Secondly, under the guidance of coherence rule the translation is coherent in the target receiver’s situation and readable for children by taking the psychology, language features and acceptability of children and so on into consideration. Then, under the guidance of fidelity rule the translator is loyal to the original author from the style and employment of figure of speech in order to express the flavor of the original text. What’s more, the realization of translation purpose is Li Wenjun’s first consideration in his translation. Li Wenjun mainly employs translation methods, such as addition, rhetorical reduplication and division, to fulfill his translation purpose.The thesis concludes that Li Wenjuns’ s translation realizes his translation purpose. Li Wenjun’s translation coveys the optimistic idea and follows linguistic customs of the target readers on the lexical and syntactic levels. Besides, his translation is loyal to the original text from the style and adoption of figures of speech to the greatest extent, presenting the style and flavor of the original text to the target readers exactly. Through these translation action, his translation brings happiness to children and helps them learn language. In addition, this research in this thesis offers a new perspective to study Li Wenjun’s version of The Secret Garden. Meanwhile, the study proves that Skopos Theory can be used to study children literature translation. The research of this thesis is also expected to give some suggestion to children literature translation and draw more attention on children literature translation.