A Comparative Study Of The Translations Of The Art Of War From The Perspective Of The Skopos Theory

The C-E translation of Chinese classics is an important means to propagate our traditional culture and promote China's global status as a big country of culture.However,the profound cultural connotation,the obscure meaning,the highly refined wording and the use of obsolete and interchangeable words make it difficult for translators to accurately reproduce the thoughts and style of the ancient classics in their translations.When translating Chinese classics,translators face greater challenges because they have to conduct double translation,namely,the intralingual translation from ancient Chinese to modern Chinese and the interlingual translation from modern Chinese to English.To better conduct the translation of Chinese classics,the translators must have solid command of both Chinese and English language and good knowledge of Chinese classical culture and literature.As a representative masterpiece among Chinese classics,The Art of War is China's earliest military theory works and the world's earliest as well.Its thirteen chapters have been translated into over 30 languages and introduced to countries all over the world(???,2008).The book was written for the purpose of guiding wars,but in the modern world,The Art of War has exerted a far-reaching influence on various aspects of people's life,i.e.politics,business competition,social activity and so on.From the perspective of the Skopos theory and its major rules guiding translation,namely the Skopos Rule,the Fidelity Rule and the Coherence Rule,the author of this thesis makes a comparative study of translations of the thirteen chapters of The Art of War respectively by Samuel B.Griffith and Lin Wusun,which has not yet been conducted by any scholars before.By presenting and analyzing typical examples,the author studies the differences between the translations under different skopos of translators from the following aspects,including the use of different translation strategies due to different skopos,the translation of culture-loaded words,the translation of sentences and treatment of syntactical structures,the translation of military terms,the translation of titles of chapters,prevention of misunderstanding the source text,the translation of figures of speech and the use of annotation.Meanwhile,in the hope of helping the further study and improvement of the C-E translation of The Art of War,the author points out,analyzes and gives suggestions to several points of what he believes as less satisfactory translations of both translators.By so doing,the author attempts to probe into the significance of the Skopos theory in guiding the studies of C-E translation of Chinese classics.