A Study of the Official Website English Versions of Two Jiangsu-based 985-Project Universities—from the Perspective of Skopos Theory

Abstract：As we all know, together with China’s present opening up to the outside, international exchanges are becoming more and more popular. In this situation, an increasing number of colleges and universities in China began to pay attention to their website construction. Considered as an important window for external publicity, Chinese official website of universities is particular significant regarding its translation. The quality, however, of the translation is not satisfied. Blunt and lengthy translation prevails. In view of this, combining with the Skopos theory to reexamine the English translation of Chinese university webpage is very meaningful.

Based on the theory of German functionalism translation ， particularly Vermeer's Skopos theory, this paper studies the English version school profile of the two 985 universities in Jiangsu Province regarding expected function of the target text and the acceptance characteristics of the target readers. Also, this paper tries to find out the typical translation errors, including pragmatic, cultural, linguistic and text one, and discuss the causes of them. Then it tries to put forward several methods such as addition, omission and adaptation, in order to better serve the publicity of school images.

Key words: Functional Translation; Skopos Theory; English Version of Official Website

目的论视角下江苏省两所 985 高校官网的英译研究

摘要：众所周知，互联网日益成为全球最为重要的信息传播和交流媒介，同时，现 阶段我国对外开放程度不断提高，国际间交流愈发密切。在这种形势下，我国越 来越多高校开始重视其网站建设。作为对外宣传的一个重要窗口，中国高校官网 简介的英文翻译显得尤为重要。然而，许多高校简介的译文质量并不理想，生硬 而又冗长的简介随处可见，也没有照顾到读者的文化背景。基于这样的认识，结 合翻译目的论去审视我国高校网页中英文翻译，显得十分有意义。本文借鉴德国 功能主义翻译理论——“目的论”，从目标文本的预期功能和目标读者的接受特 点出发，对江苏省内两所 985 高校（南京大学、东南大学）的官网英文版“学校 简介”进行研究，通过文本分析，找出其中存在的各种典型的翻译失误,包括在 译文中保留了对目标受众无用的信息、文化专有项过多且缺少必要的注释以及语 言性翻译失误等，并探讨其产生的原因。在其基础上，本文尝试提出高校官网的 英译几种可以采用的方法，如省略、释义、扩充，以便更好地为高校形象塑造、 对外宣传、交流合作服务。

关键词：翻译功能理论；目的论；高校官网简介

Contents

Abstract In English I

Abstract In Chinese III

I. Introduction 1

1.1 Research background 1

1.2 Research significance 1

1.3 Research questions 3

1.4 Layout of the thesis 3

II Literature Review 5

2.1 Previous studies on university website translation 5

2.2 Previous studies on functional theories of translation theories 6

2.3