A Report On The Translation Of Plants On My Life Journey Under The Guidance Of The Skopos Theory

This report,combined with the Skopos theory,selects nine pieces of proses from Wang Zengqi’s collection “Plants on My Life Journey”.As an excellent collection of essays,“Plants on My Life Journey” reflects many local customs and cultures in China.Wang’s prose is beautiful and natural,describing daily things,and these proses have their artistic conception.Wang’s love for nature and beauty reflects in the proses can always arouse people’s deep feelings in their hearts.For theory selection,the translator chooses the Skopos theory and pays attention to the expected function of the translation.Originated in Germany in the 1970 s and is represented by Katharina Reiss,Hans J.Vermeer,and Justa Holz Manttari,this theory contains three rules,which are skopos rule,coherence rule,and fidelity rule.It believes that the purpose is the most important part of the translation process.Therefore,the translator’s translation strategy must be determined by the expected function and purpose of the target text,which is “the skopos rule”.This theory emphasizes not only the readability of the target text but also the expected function of the target text.Readability is the “coherence rule”.In addition,the fidelity rule and the coherence rule should serve the skopos rule.This report mainly contains six parts: introduction,process description,literature review,theoretical framework,case study,and conclusion.Chapter Five is the most important part of this report.For this part,the translation of cultural images,dish names,and sentence structures are analyzed.Under the guidance of this theory,appropriate translation methods will be used for further study,so that the expected purpose of the translation can be achieved.The translation problems mainly include two levels: lexical level and syntactical level.First of all,to deal with the cultural barriers existing in the cultural images,the translator use addition or explanation.In terms of sentences,it involves structure reconstruction,which means processing sentence structure according to foreign readers’ reading habits.Under the guidance of Skopos theory,different translation methods are adopted to translate the proses,which is also helpful to the communication and transmission of the excellent culture of China.And the translator expects that the analysis in this report can be used for the reference for further studies on the translation of Chinese proses into foreign languages.