On The Chinese Version Of Gone With The Wind From The Functional Perspective

In the translating tradition, a translator is habitually regarded as invisible as he or she should be thoroughly objective to represent the meaning, value and style of the original text. Different from scientific translation, literary translation does not only transfer the literal meaning, but also represents the style of the author and provides the aesthetic perception feeling for target readers with that of those source readers. Therefore, literary translation requires the translator’s creativity and the orientation of the target readers. Since different countries have different cultures, translation should reflect the function of communication and transmission of culture. Based on this theory, the Skopos theory was put forward by Hans Vermeer and developed in Germany in the late 1970s. The Skopos theory provided a more functional and sociocultural concept of translation.The Skopos theory emphasized that translators are at service for readers and the choice of translating strategy depended on the target readers. As the reading purposes of readers are different, the same translating work cannot meet the different needs of different readers. The author of this thesis attempts to apply the Skopos theory to a case study of Fu Donghua’s translation Gone with the Wind in order to explain the functional translation theory. From a new perspective we now get a chance to get insight into Fu Donghua’s translation with the help of Functionalist Approaches stemmed from Germany. This paper sets goals on analyzing Fu Donghua’s translation of Gone with the Wind, including his Skopos, his translating strategy and the influential factors, so as to advocate a more scientific and systematic approach to Functionalist Translation of literary works. It is hoped that this thesis can shed some light on studies of literary translation.