A Comparative Study Of Two Chinese Versions Of The Joy Luck Club From The Perspective Of Skopostheorie

The Joy Luck Club is a renowned novel written by Amy Tan describing the mother-daughter relationships between China-born mothers and America-born daughters and how their ideas clash. One of this novel’s characteristics is the embodiment of Chinese elements or Chineseness. The book has several Chinese versions yet the author chooses the two versions written by Chen Naishan(2010) and Tian Qing(1992). According to the Skopostheorie, translation is a purposeful intercultural action. The production of any translation is conditioned by many factors. This thesis intends to study The Joy Luck Club with skopostheorie in order to compare the two versions and analyze the translation strategies as well as translation errors from such a point of view for new findings.In this thesis, the author tries to explore how skopostheorie exerts an impact on a translator’s choice of strategies in the translation process, and how the strategies affect the effects of a translation. Through a comparative study of the two Chinese versions of The Joy Luck Club, the research reveals that the two translators take different strategies: Tian Qing mainly adopts literal translation, yet somewhere in the book the word for word translation hinders readers’ understanding. By contrast, in addition to literal translation, Chen Naishan boldly employs free translation which to some extent helps readers grasp the Chinese elements the novel contains.From this study, the author reaches the following conclusion. Firstly, when translators put literary works with Chinese elements into Chinese, they should try to reflect the Chinese culture and tradition rather than pursue the so-called equivalence so that readers of the target text can better appreciate the content of the source text. Secondly, skopostheorie offers us a different perspective in analysing versions. Translation strategies and translation action should follow the skopos rule as the highest principle. A faithful or beautiful version is not equal to the best translation. A version whose literal meaning is not fully consistent with the meaning of the source text does not necessarily mean a mistranslation. The author sincerely hopes that more valuable researches on the translation of Chinese elements in literary works will be done in the wake of this thesis.