At present, a majority of cosmetics instruction translation only stay at the linguistic level, many scholars only think about the translation of cosmetics instruction from the form and content of the language without the cultural background of the target language。 (Pan &Huang 2011:66) Overview the research status of translation theory, scant research is conducted on the theory applied to cosmetics instruction translation。 Comparatively speaking, Skopostheorie is a relatively new model in translational studies, and it can release translation from the shackle of the source text, providing a new perspective on translation, especially such pragmatic translation as cosmetics instruction translation。(Yan 2008:7) This paper makes an analysis of female cosmetics instructions and preliminarily discusses the translation strategy from the perspective of Skopostheorie the German functionalists propose。论文网
2。 Literature Review
2。1 Background and development of Skopostheorie
The Skopostheorie was originally proposed by Hans Vermeer, a German functional translation theorist。 Its formation and development had experienced three stages: in the first stage comes Katharina Reiss’s research。 (Reiss 1989) In her Possibilities and Limitations in Translation Criticism which published in 1971, regarded text function as a standard of translation criticism for the first time。 On one hand, she still insisted on equivalence theory with original as the center。 On the other hand, she also evaluated the text basing on the relationship between the function of the original and the translation。 In addition, she pointed out ideal translation should be equivalent to the original text from conceptual content, linguistic form and communicative function。 She named it’s a kind of comprehensive communicative translation。 But in practice, she found that some equivalence is impossible, and should not pursue at times。 These exceptions caused by specific translation brief。 In her view, the translator should give priority to the functional characteristics of the target text instead of principle of reciprocity。 During the whole translation process, the frame of reference should not be equal, but as translation reached one or more communicative functions which expected in the cultural environment of the target language。 Therefore, translation criticism can not just rely on analysis of features in the source, consideration should be given to translation whether achieve the desired results or not。 Thus it can be seen that Reiss’s research laid the foundation for the birth of Skopostheorie。
In the second stage, Reiss’s student, Vermeer, had inherited some of her ideas。 He broke through the theory of equivalence, which regarded source language as a center。 He formulated Skopostheorie based on action theory, and with Skopos of text as the first rule during the translation。 Vermeer’s Skopostheorie broke out of the shackles of the theory of equivalence completely。 (Vermeer 1983) He considered that language alone can not solve the problem of translation。 In his opinion, translation is a kind of communicative language, and a transformation of non-linguistic sign from one language to another language。 Consequently, translation is a kind of human behavior。 The core concept of Skopostheorie is that translation method and translation strategy should be determined by the intended purpose or function。 Vermeer proposed translation is a human activity, any action has a purpose and translation is a purposeful action。 So translation is a discourse produced in the context of a target language for a purpose and a target audience。 (Tang 2008:159) According to the theory of behavior, Skopostheorie believes human behavior is a purposeful action happening under certain circumstances。 It is a part of the specific context, moreover, has a certain influence on context。 Because different cultures have different customs and values, hence, translation is not a one to one language conversion activity。 But translation is a human activity, with the same as other human actions, translation also has a purpose。 The purpose of translation is to be determined before the translation begins。 When in translation, the translator should have a selective translation in combination with the translation purpose and the specific situation of the target text readers based on the specific requirements。文献综述