Yibin University本科生毕业论文题目在翻译目的论指导下英语介词的汉译研究院别外国语学院____________ 专业英语_______________学生姓名简汝梦______________ 学号 110405034 班级 2011 级 5 班指导教师徐文英职称讲师_____教务处制表年月日Study on the Translation Strategies of English Prepositions Based on SkoposTheoryJian Rumeng简汝梦SupervisorXu WenyingAn Essay Submitted as a Partial Requirement forthe Degree of B. A. in EnglishSchool of Foreign LanguagesYibin UniversityMay, 201×在翻译目的论指导下英语介词的汉译研究摘要：英语是一种介词的语言，英语介词使用频率高，搭配能力强，含义灵活，因此在翻译中是比较难以处理的一种词类。
在翻译时需要从其基本含义出发，密切联系上下文灵活处理。
翻译目的论以人类行为理论为指导，把翻译置于人类行为理论的范畴研究。
目的论论者认为翻译是有明确的目的和意图，在译者的作用下，以原文文本为基础的跨文化的人类交际活动。
目的论以文本目的为翻译过程的第一准则，认为翻译是一种有目的的活动，目的决定了译者需要采用何种翻译策略和方法。
因此，不难看出翻译目的论与英语介词的翻译有着千丝万缕的联系，目的论的提出无疑为英语介词的汉译提供了可靠的指导。
本文拟从目的论的角度对英语介词的汉译策略进行探讨，希望能在一定程度上证明目的论对英语介词翻译的实用性。
关键词：英语介词；翻译；目的论Study on the Translation Strategies of English Prepositions Based on SkoposTheoryAbstractEnglish is a language of English prepositions which are used frequently. With flexible meanings and usages, thus they are difficult to deal with in translation. When translating them, we need to proceed from its basic meaning, in close contact with the context of flexible processing. Skopos Theory regards human behavior theory as the instruction, and put translation a study of under it. The Skopos theory professors view that translation, in the role of the translator, is a cross-cultural human communication activities with clear purpose and intention based on the original text. Skopos Theory takes text purpose as the first criteria in the process of translation and holds that translation is a purposeful activity, which determines what translation strategies and methods the translator needs. It’The emergence of Skopos theory undoubtedly provided reliable guidance for the translation of English prepositions. This paper is going to discuss the translation strategies of English prepositions from the perspective of Skopos Theory, and hopes to demonstrate the applicability of Skopos theory guiding the translation of English prepositions in a certain extent.key words: English prepositions; translation; Skopos theoryAcknowledgmentsMy deepest gratitude goes first and foremost to Professor ×××, my supervisor, for her constant encouragement and guidance. She has walked me through all the stages of the writing of this thesis. Without her consistent and illuminating instruction, this thesis could not have reached its present form.I am also greatly indebted to the professors and teachers at the Department of English, who have instructed and helped me a lot in the past two years.I also owe my sincere gratitude to my friends and my fellow classmates who gave me their help and time in listening to me and helping me work out my problems during the difficult course of the thesis.Content摘要 (i)Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... i i Acknowledgments ..................................................................................................................... i ii Ⅰ. Introduction ..................................................................................................................... - 1 - Ⅱ. A Brief Review of Skopos Theory ..................................................................................... - 2 - A． The Development of Skopos Theory .......................................................................... - 2 -B. The Concept of Skopos Theory ...................................................................................... - 4 -1. The Definition of Skopos Theory ............................................................................... - 4 -2. Three Rules of Skopos Theory ................................................................................... - 6 -3. The Applicability of Skopos Theory of Translation of English Prepositions ............... - 7 -C. Remarks on skopos theory ............................................................................................ - 8 - Ⅲ. A Brief Review of English Prepositions ......................................................................... - 11 -A. The Concept of English Prepositions ........................................................................... - 11 -B. The Features of English Prepositions .......................................................................... - 11 -C. The Applicability of Skopos Theory of Translation of English Prepositions ................ - 12 - Ⅳ The Translation Strategies of English Prepositions in the Light of Skopos Theory ......... - 14 -A. Necessary Addition of Words ...................................................................................... - 14 -B. Necessary Omission of Words ..................................................................................... - 16 -C. Mutual Transformation of Affirmative and Negative Expression ............................... - 18 -D. Translation of Division................................................................................................. - 19 -E. Conversion of Parts of Speech .................................................................................... - 21 -1. Convert Prepositions into Connectives ................................................................... - 21 -2. Convert Prepositions into Adjectives and Adverbs................................................. - 22 -3. Convert Prepositions into Verbs.............................................................................. - 22 - V. Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... - 26 - Works Cited ......................................................................................................................... - 27 -Ⅰ. IntroductionAs times pass, with China’s entering to WTO, Chinese and English seem to be equally important in the world, so the mutual transformation of the two languages is becoming a more and more important task for us. Here "one language transform into other" is called the mutual translation. In English, the number of English preposition is not large, but the constitution prepositional phrases in English can be seen here and there. They are versatile and with flexible position; play an important role in a sentence. So, it is very important for the correct translation of English prepositions, worthy of further research and analysis. However, the English prepositions’ flexible characteristic has brought a huge challenge to the translator. In this case, the translation of English prepositions must jump out the principle of simple language equivalence model and seek new development. The emergence of Skopos theory undoubtedly provides effective guidance for the translation of English prepositions. Skopos Theory takes text purpose as the first criteria in the process of translation and holds that translation is a purposeful activity,which determines what translation strategies and methods the translator needs, namely "purposeful determinism". Therefore, if the translator can skilled grasp the purpose of translation and the translation method, it can translate high quality version. In view of this, this paper is going to discuss the translation strategies of English prepositions from the perspective of Skopos Theory, for the hope to help the translator better understand the features and functions of English prepositions, and provides guidance for translators in the Chinese translation of English prepositions, also hope to demonstrate the applicability of Skopos theory guiding the translation of English prepositions in a certain extent.Ⅱ. A Brief Review of Skopos TheoryThroughout the history of translation, people were constantly showing deliberation and exploration over many problems in translation, thus formulated different translation theories and study schools, various translation theories competing and exhibiting, provided new perspective for translation studies. From the beginning of the mid twentieth Century, western studies on translation theory has made great breakthrough. Theorists begin to interpret translation phenomena from point of views of hermeneutics, deconstruction, post colonialism, feminism, discourse right, aesthetics of reception, and reader response theory, etc. leading the emergence of manipulation, polysystem and functionalist and other fractions. Among them, the fundamental theory of functional translation theory is Skopos theory. (Tang 159) The immediate background of skopos theory is action theory. Before, translation had been seen mainly as a code-switching procedure. With the pragmatic turn both in linguistics (leading to a pragmatics-based text theory) and literary theory (leading to reception aesthetics) as well as in communication theory in mind, Vermeer and the other skopos scholars, started to view translation as a purposeful intercultural communicative activity between individuals instead of something that is done to a text by a translator. “The social background was the growing need for professional translators and interpreters not only in industry and commerce but also in the international organizations established after World War II.” (Bian 44) As a core theory of functionalist, it is a new translation theory developed by a German translator and critic, Han Vermeer. This theory basically belongs to the external studies on translation, it focuses on the choice of purposes during the process of translation, so on doubt can compensate for the lack of traditional translation theory study, thus adding a new research perspective for the exploration to interdisciplinary translation.A． The Development of Skopos TheoryEmerge in an endless stream of Chinese and foreign translation theories, most of which take translation as linguistic behavior, the study focused on the language itself.For example: the idea of German Leipzig school: translation is a pure language semantic behavior, taking sentence as a unit, independent of special text, writer, wood and context. In 1972 Katharina first proposed the function models of translation, but she still made linguistic as the key point the translation. (Li 113) Skopos theory developed from the functionalist translation theory in the 1970's in German. The main contributors are Katharina Reiss, Hans Vermeer, Justa Holz Manttari and Christiane Nord.The first stage: “Reiss published ‘Possibilities and Limitations in Translation Criticism’, in which the prototype of the functionalist theory in translation was firstly mentioned.” (Wang, Zhao 360) On one hand, while she is still "adhere to the original text as the center of the equivalence theory"; on the other hand, she think one should evaluate a text based on "the relationship between both the original text and the version ", and points out that “the ideal version should be equal to the original text from the conceptual content, language forms and communicative function", she named this translation "comprehensive communicative translation". The second stage: Vermeer, student of Rice, inherited some of Reiss’ ideas, and at the same time also broke the equivalence theory in traditional translation theory; based on the theory of behavior, with the purposeful rule as the first law of translation, she created the Skopos theory. The purpose of Skopos theory refers to the communicative purpose of the translation, and has something to do with the translation recipient, text environment and the target functions and other factors. (Wang 144) According to Vermeer's point of view, the core meaning and the supreme law of the theory is "purposeful principle", that is to say the purposes of translation activities mostly determines the translation activity process, a direct result of which is to produce a target language that can achieve the expected function. In other words, the purpose of translation largely determines the translation strategies and methods. (Huang 73) The third stage: Mantari made a further study based on Vermeer's foundation, drawing on communication and behavior theory, she put forward the theory of translational action theory, pointed out that "translation is a complex behavior to achieve forspecial purpose". The object of study of Mantari's translation theory covers all forms of intercultural transfer, and she proposed to distinguish translation and translation behavior. Translation behavior refers to a process that conveys information for the realization of conversion design for the trans-culture and cross-language information; and translation is just a text form of cultural transformation activities, it is the specific operation of translation behavior. In addition, she also emphasized the behavior of translation process, the role of participants, and the occurrence environment in translation plays a important role in translation practice. (Wang 144) The fourth stage: In 1989, Nord bring the "function and fidelity principle" in the functionalist translation theory. He described the internal and external factors of the analysis of text in translation that need to be considered, and how to lay down translation strategies that satisfy the purpose of translation based on the function of the source language, so that made the Functionalist Skopos theory is scientific and as a guide.B. The Concept of Skopos TheoryHere I discuss three aspects of skopos theory: the definition of skopos theory, three rules of skopos theory, and the applicability of skopos theory of translation of English prepositions.1. The Definition of Skopos TheoryMost of the domestic scholars put the "Skopos Theory" and "functionalism theory" as the same theory, and use them abusively without distinction. In fact, "Skopos school" and "functionalism school" is not the same in specific meaning, which Nord had done to distinguish: "functionalism is a broad term for various theories of study text and the function of translation" (Chen 49) Skopos theory was firstly advanced by Hans Vermeer, a German theorist of translation. “It was the first time to dissertate the basic principles and rules of skopos theory and the relationships among these principles and rules in A Framework for a General. The theory of translation was published by Vermeer in 1978.” (Dang 135) “Skopos is a Greek word for "purpose".Skopos theory is a kind of translation theory that applies the notion of Skopos to translation.” (Du 507) Skopos Theory regards human behavior theory as the instruction, and put translation a study of under it. The Skopos theory professors view that translation, in the role of the translator, is a cross-cultural human communication activities with clear purpose and intention based on the original text. Translation is a interactive activities with intention. The intention first refers to the aim to change the existing situation, at least let those who due to language barriers having difficulty in communicating achieve the communicative activities; secondly, refers to the more strict nature intention in communication, for instance, provides the content of source language expressed by the author to the target language receiver. According to that theory, the prime principle determining any translation process is the purpose (Skopos) of the overall translational action. There possibly are three kinds of purpose in the field of translation:(1) The general purpose aimed at by the translator in the translation process (perhaps "to earn a living");(2) The communicative purpose aimed at by the target teat in the target situation (perhaps "to instruct the reader");(3) The purpose aimed at by a particular translation strategy or procedure (for example, "to translate literally in order to show the structural particularities of the source language"). (Du 507)For this line of thought, translation cannot be considered a one-to-one transfer between languages.”" In Vermeer' s approach, translation is a form of translational action based on a source text, which may consist of verbal and/or nonverbal elements.” Vermeer explained that any action has an aim or purpose, for translation is considered as one of human actions, it should have its own aim or purpose. So he called his theory translation Skopos theory, which means this is a theory of purposeful action.2. Three Rules of Skopos TheoryAs the most important theory of functionalism, skopos theory has its own distinctive characteristics. “Three rules are put forward to govern and guide the translational action: skopos rule, coherence rule and fidelity rule. These rules are used to accommodate translations to different functions.” (Wang 154)The first rule of translation is the skopos rule. Skopos rules refers to translation should be in the target language context and culture, and acts according to the anticipated means expected by the TL audience. The fundamental principle that can decide the process of the whole translation activity is skopos, which is further divided into three types: 1) the basic purpose of the translator; 2)the communicative purpose of the translated text; 3) the purpose that specific translation strategy or method want to achieve. But skopos is a term often refers to the purpose of the original text, namely, communicative purposes. Besides skopos, Vermeer also mentioned several related concept: they are aim, purpose, intention and function. Aim is the final result behavior is to achieve; purpose refers to the phase and result of the process to reach the target; function refers to the meaning that the text conveys in the eyes of recipients; intention refers to the purposeful action plan, including the sender producing text purposefully in a proper way and the recipient has his goal when understands the text. To distinguish the purpose and intention of the sender and receiver is very important, because the sender and recipient is in different cultural background and context from the definition. Among the five concepts, skopos is a class concept, the remaining four are subordination concept. Skopos is determined by the translation initiator. (Duan 82)After the Skopos rule is the coherence rule, “Coherence rule is also called the intra-textual coherence. It means that the target text should have full coherence so that the target readership can be able to understand the text in an easy and clear way.” (Li 115) Nord said that a translator can offer information of the target text in the target culture and language, and it was much like someone else in the source culture andlanguage to offer information. “Fidelity rule is also called ‘inter-textual coherence’, which means that the target-text should conform to its source-text, or it should hear some relation with the source text.” (Sun, Wang 154) It is somewhat alike to equivalence theory. But in Functionalism, fidelity rule should he subordinate to skopos rule and coherence rule. Neglecting the fidelity rule is not the purpose. In fact, we can see that the consistency in translation is important. Functionalism argues against the hidebound consistency between the source-text and the target-text. But it still insists on the relationship between them. So, we can have a conclusion that fidelity rule should he flexible used. It is not an absolutely preciseness conclusion for any kind of translation.The relationship among these three rules is: fidelity rule subordinate to the coherence rule, and the two were subjected to the objective rules. If the translation purpose requires to change the original function, translation is no longer the original text of the interlingual coherence, but appropriate or conform to the purpose of translation; if the translation purpose requires the interlingual be incoherent, then the intertextual coherence rule is no longer valid.3. The Applicability of Skopos Theory of Translation of English PrepositionsThe differences among different languages of their parts of not only in their numbers and semantics, but also in their forms of combination; therefore, the translator must often, from the form to the semantic structure, reorganize the original information to meet the requirements of the target language. Translation is an interlingual transformation process, there are big differences between English and Chinese both in language structures and means of illustration, in rare cases can we use Chinese directly express the meaning of original text just according to the English forms and structures; in most cases, we need appropriate adjustments to the forms and structures of the original sentences the in order to make the translation smooth and loyal. (Yu 117)The main function of Preposition is its syntactic function. Prepositions in thesentence generate semantic relations between words. Therefore, the most importance to translate prepositions is to grasp the most accurate logical semantic relationship between word and word in certain context that prepositions appear. For the preposition that can directly remain, literal translation is the most convenient way, namely, according to the form and structure of the original language, translate English prepositions into Chinese prepositions or prepositional phrase. In many cases, conversion of parts of speech is a flexible mean to transform the original sentence pattern, and to make text more smooth and coherent. (Wang, Li 65)English prepositions are flexible, which brings a huge challenge to the translator. In this case, translation of English prepositions must jump out the principle of simple language equivalence model and seek new development. The emergence of skopos theory undoubtedly provides effective guidance for the translation of English prepositions.Skopos theory get rid of the constraint of the equivalent translation or translation equivalence, began to emphasize the translator's initiative, thus it solves the problem of other translation theories failed to solve, broaden the translation study fields, give the translation more meanings, put f translation on the framework of behavior theory and cross-cultural communication, give western translation theorists which lead by linguistics, the mainstream, a new exploration of the road. According to the intended purposes of the target text, the translator should accommodate forms and stylistic conventions of the target language, in the translation process, using means of omission or transformation to deal with the original text to produce infection influence on the target language receiver.C. Remarks on skopos theorySince the Skopos theory came into being, there had been some criticisms. With the development of the translation theory in China, some scholars have studied this theory and began to bring forward their disagreement or doubt. For example,Professor Peng Changjiang working at Hunan Norma University wrote an article published in the "Journal of Foreign Languages"criticizing the skopos theory. He thinks that skopos theory based their interpretation of translation on the wrong basis. “He said, the skopos theorists mistakenly include all the work done by the translators into the conception of translation, but in fact, translators work should be limited to the dealing with words.” (Wang, Zhao360)"Skopos Theory" pays more attention to the various factors of behavioral theory. Although some people think that “Skopos Theory" proposed by Hans and the concept of cultural translation cannot be fully applied in the translation of literary works, but for some of the contextual factors in non-literary translation can not be ignored. "Skopos theory" has interpreted in a new, creative view. "Skopos theory" advocate that definite translation from the macro view, from a new angle, it broke the translation equivalence theory, put the expected goal of translation to a higher level, and give more emphasis on the stylistic function and role of the translator in the translating process, lead the translation shifts the focus from the the representation of the source text to the text creation. "Skopos theory" put translation included in the category of intercultural communication study, provides a new perspective for translation studies, has positive significance in guiding translation practice. (Li 114) Skopos theory highlights the participants of the translation activities， especially the role and influence of the initiator in translation activities during the whole process of translation, and lift the subject role the translator, the active participator. Skopos theory demands the translated text realizing its communicative function in the culture of target language, so the target cultural context, such as the politic, economic, social and historical culture, ideology, dominant genre of literature, literary norms of a specific historical period plays an indispensable role in translation activities, it restricts choice of translation materials, the purpose of translation, the choice of translation strategies of the translator, and the production of the target text and the role of the target text played in the target language and culture status. Skopos theory trys to coordinate the cultural function of translation and the effect and mechanism oftarget culture on translation activities. The source language is rectifying the target language, and at the same time vice versa.In addition, with broad practical, skopos theory focuses on the features of text type, which helps to improve the translator’s awareness of language signs of communicative function and functional translation units and improve the translation efficiency. However, the skopos theory pays much attention to the research of the function of target text and largely rewrites the version for the effect of target text, thus greatly weakening the original text function. In a word, skopos theory provides a new perspective for translation studies, is conducive to the study of translation variants, promote the development of translation theory. (Mao 120)Ⅲ. A Brief Review of English PrepositionsEnglish preposition is empty words, but it is also an important “function words". It has its unique characteristics. When it comes to the the applicability of skopos theory of translation of English prepositions, we have to consider both the features of skopos theory and English prepositions.A. The Concept of English PrepositionsFrom the perspective of linguistics, English preposition is empty words, but it is also an important “function words", is one of the important ligament to form sentences and articles. It is used to explain the relationship between a noun or pronoun and other elements of the sentence, cannot make components of the sentence alone. Prepositions, according to the position of English word, also interpreted as words put forward, is used in front of nouns, pronouns and some noun phrase, it makes up of preposition structure, expressing the direction, object, place, time of an action or behavior. Although there is only about 100 simple prepositions and complex preposition in the English vocabulary; however, they are used very frequently. Almost one of every eight words is a preposition. (Gu 66) Most prepositions’ meanings are very flexible, in different language environment, a preposition can be with various meanings and multipurpose, plays a very important role in English sentences. (Xu 78)B. The Features of English PrepositionsEnglish preposition has the following characteristics:First, from the history of the development of English, the emergence of English prepositions is the degenerated results of morphological changes on English suffix. Disappearing of the English suffix made preposition has become an indispensable link words, and gradually increased its activity in the long process of development, namely the ability of collocation and combination. Especially the frequently used prepositions, can match with verbs, adjectives, and nouns, expressing different。
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