On The Translation Of Museum Texts From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

Museum cultural relics have great historical,cultural and aesthetic value.They are not only fine works of art,but also witnesses of history.The translation of texts about these cultural relics is of great significance in the cultural exchange between China and the West.The Shaanxi History Museum is China’s first large-scale modern national museum.Its collection of cultural relics is a rich reflection of Chinese history and culture.Since 2018,the Shaanxi History Museum and Shaanxi Huaxia Cultural and Creative Co.,LTD have jointly launched the Shaanxi History Museum Calendar,a bilingual product favored by both domestic and foreign visitors and readers.The theme of the 2021 calendar is “Hua Wu Da Tang”(Highlight of Tang Treasures).It is about a rich collection of cultural relics unearthed from the Hejiacun Hoard.The calendar has a monthly theme,and presents 321 pieces of cultural relics carefully selected to show a true picture of the court life,social life,and social fashions of the Tang Dynasty,providing the reader with a vivid image of the historical epic of the prosperous Tang Dynasty in China.This thesis took the C-E bilingual calendar of the Shaanxi History Museum Calendar · Highlight of Tang Treasures 2021(SHMC 2021)as its subject matter.Though a bilingual product,it is actually a translation product from Chinese into English,with its Chinese texts provided by the museum as source texts to the translators,a team from Xi’an International Studies University.The author studies the translation process and translation methods of the SHMC 2021 in detail by using the method of case study,interview and comparative study.Considering that the translation purpose of the SHMC 2021 determines its translation strategy,the functionalist Skopos theory of translation has been adopted to guide this study.In the light of this theory,this thesis analyzed how the translation purpose influenced,or even decided,the translation principles and methods.This thesis also investigated how the three rules of Skopos theory,namely “the Skopos rule”,“the coherence rule”and “the fidelity rule”,influenced or guided the translation methods.It has been found in this study that,under the guidance of the Skopos rule,the translation methods such as omission,annotation,generalization,conversion,free translation,and amplification have been employed for space-saving,cultural communication and readers’ comprehension.Under the guidance of the coherence rule,translators have applied translation methods like division,combination,reconstruction,rewriting,and inversion to make the translation smooth,coherent,and readable.Under the guidance of the fidelity rule,translators have used such translation methods as transliteration,literal translation,and linear translation to make the translation faithful to the original text,and increase the cultural authenticity of the calendar.Finally,through the analysis of the specific text of this calendar,general translation principles and methods were explored in the hope of throwing light on the translation of museum texts in general.