Abstract

The thesis will base on Skopostheorie and its three basic principles to compare The True Story of Ah Q by the Yang’s couple with The Real Story of Ah Q by Julia Lovell. The thesis aims to let the readers understand that due to different purposes of translation, different culture background of the translators and target readers, different versions have different translation methods. With the aim to promote Chinese culture, Yang’s version mainly adopted foreignization while Lovell mainly employed domestication so that target readers could comprehend the content of source text easily. However, whether foreignization or domestication, each one has its own merits and weaknesses. Foreignization and domestication in translation do not contradict with each other, but complement with each other. What is important is that the translator should try to bridge the gap between different cultures. Any excellent version can’t do without the translator’s flexible steering of the two translation methods.

Keywords: skopostheorie; domestication; foreignization; Ah Q Zheng Zhuan

Contents

Abstract

摘要

1. Introduction-1

2. Literature Review-1

2.1 A brief introduction of Ah Q Zheng Zhuan-1

2.2 The origin and development of Skopostheorie-2

2.3 The application of Skopostheorie in China-2

3. Three Basic Concepts of Skopostheorie-3

3.1 Skopos rule-3

3.2 Coherence rule-3

3.3 Fidelity rule-4

4. Comparative Study of Two Versions-4

4.1 Different translation strategies-4

4.2 Different translation styles-5

5. Analysis of the Two English Versions from the Perspective of Skopostheorie-6

5.1 The skopos in two English versions-6

5.2 Differences in adopting skopos rule-6

5.3 Differences in adopting coherence rule-9

5.4 Differences in adopting fidelity rule-10

6. Conclusion-11

Works Cited-13