A Study On EST Translation From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

As is known to all, scientific English plays an irreplaceable role in information communication for a long time. It is not only an efficient way for people to get all kinds of information, but also it is an effective method to guarantee effective communication. No matter whether in the aspect of vocabulary or syntactic structure, scientific English has its own characteristics. Scientific English often adopts the passive voice, omitting structure to ensure its objectivity and simplicity. Therefore, translators should master the unique stylistic features of scientific English, and be familiar with the translation principles and skills, and more importantly, it is to put these theories into practice.Based on the participation in the translation of Huadian Distributed Energy Station Project, the author systematically studies scientific English translation from the perspective of Skopos theory. Skopos theory is based on three fundamental principles:the objective rule, coherence rule and fidelity rule. The Skopos theory requires the translator to determine translation methods and techniques according to the translation purpose. Firstly, the author does some theoretically thinking about the characteristics of the discourse, syntax, vocabulary in Huadian Distributed Energy Station Translation Project, and skillfully utilizes Skopos theory into translation practice. In addition, in combination with the practical process of translation, the author also summarizes the quality of translator, the cooperation between translation team and so on.This paper consists of four parts. The first part introduces the background and significance of Huadian Distributed Energy Station Project. The second part mainly elaborates the specific requirements of translation projects, including preparations before translation, translation process, and reflections after translation. The third part takes Huadian Distributed Energy Station translation project as example, specifically introduces the related translation theories of scientific English, the unique characteristics of scientific English in lexical and syntactic level. Moreover, the author studies the characteristics of this kind of scientific English text through the domestic and foreign scholar’s research results. The fourth part is the main part of the paper, which elaborates the translation principles and strategies the author used in translation projects. The author demonstrates the functionalism and Skopos theory, specifically lists and analysis of translation skills and methods. In the last part of this paper, the author summarizes the gains and shortcomings in translation of this project, and stresses the existing problems in translation practice.This paper takes the German Functionalism Skopos theory as the theoretical foundation, Huadian distributed energy station translation project which the author participated in as the research material. After systematically reviewing main concepts of Skopos and details of the source text and features of EST text, the author came to the conclusion that the purpose of source text is to specify procedures, rules and other requirements for the target readers. The translators should know communicative function of tendering documents. In the light of the Skopos theory, the author does some preliminary researches on translation strategies in scientific English, using the reorganization, combination method, supplementary method, and omission method as translation skills, and finds out the Skopos theory is instructive to the practice of EST Translation. The author hopes it would be helpful to the future translation of such scientific English text. Based on the analysis of the specific examples the translation project, the author expects that the study can provide the richer and more effective theoretical guidance to EST translation.