Justa Holz-Manttari, a translation scholar and teacher, went further on functionalist theory. Manttari paid more attention to actional aspects of the translation process than other contemporary translation scholars, studying what kind of roles the participants play and some conditions in which the activity occurs. In Manttari’s opinion, translation is an action through which a specific purpose can be achieved and the purpose of this kind of action is to go beyond cultural and language restrains to accomplish intercultural or transcultural communication by professional translators. 

Speaking of functional theory, we cannot skip Christiane Nord, a German professor, who absorbed the previous functional translation theories and extended them to a large extent. In Translating as a Purposeful Activity: Functional Approaches Explained, Nord summarized Skopos theory and analyzed the roles of initiator, commissioner, source-text producer and target-text users soundly. Besides, it is Nord who added loyalty principle to functionalist translation theory. The difference between loyalty rule and fidelity rule lies in that the former belongs to an interpersonal category pointing to a social relationship while the latter just suggests a relationship between the source and the target texts.                                                                                                                                                                           In short, Katharina provided a solid foundation for the production of Skopos theory, and Hans Vermeer’s contribution to Skopos theory lied in that he put forward most of its principles and employed Skopos theory as the foundation to absorb other theories, dealing with specific languages and cultures. Holze-Mantari went further by her keen focus on the actional aspect of the translation process and it was her who first analyzed the roles of participants and situational condition. As for Christiane Nord, he did lots of work to refine this theory and added the rule of “loyalty”. 

 There are three basic rules in the Skopos theory which are designed to govern the translator’s action during the process of translation. They are Skopos rule, coherence rule and fidelity rule. 

Skopos rule refers to the top-ranking rule for any translation which suggests that a translation action is determined by its Skopos. However, the Skopos rule cannot be applied to any specific translation process. In Vermeer’s words, “the end justified the means”. She explained the Skopos rule in the following way: each text is produced for a given purpose and should serve this purpose. The Skopos rule thus reads as follows: translate/interpret/speak/write in a way that enables your text/translation to function in the situation in which it is used and with people who want to use it and precisely in the way they want it to function. (Vermeer, 1989)