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1.3 The Skopos Theory
Skopos Theory is a theory that applies the Skopos, a Greek word for “purpose”, to translation practice. It was first put forward by Reiss and her student Vermeer, who further developed the theory in the late 1970s and early 1980s. And then their studies were inherited by Christiane Nord. Together, they were considered as the German School of functional translation.
The Skopos Theory was summarized by Nord (2001) as “The translation purpose justifies the means.” (p.68) That is to say, as long as the translation meets the translator’s purpose, his work is successful. Translators will adjust their strategies to addressee’s tastes, expectations, preferences and communicative needs. As Vermeer (1987) once mentioned “to produce a text in a target setting for a target purpose and target addressees in target circumstances.”(p.28)
The most significant principles of Skopos Theory are skopos rule, coherence rule and fidelity rule. The fidelity rule is invalid if it violates the coherence rule. And they are both subordinate to the skopos rule. The Skopos Theory demands coherence among the source text information received by the translator, the interpretation a translator makes out of the information and the information that is encoded for the target text receivers.
The Skopos Theory represents “a general shift from predominantly linguistic and rather formal translation theories to a more functionally and socioculturally oriented concept of translation” (Baker, 2004, p.235). After the proposal of this theory, the research field of translation has been greatly widened. Loyalty to the source texts is no longer the dominating criteria for translators, who were then described as “dancers in shackles”. Influenced by the Skopos Theory, more initiatives are handed to translators and allow them to be more adaptable to different situations, contributing to a real flourishing translation industry.
1.4 Domestication and Foreignization
Domestication and foreignization are two translation strategies that were first put forward by Venuti in The Translator’s Invisibility. He mentioned that “domestication means bringing the foreign culture closely to the reader in the target culture, making the text recognizable and familiar. Foreignization, on the other hand, means taking the reader over to the foreign culture and making him or her see the differences.” (Venuti, 1995, p.37)