论文总字数：31012字

摘 要

众所周知，文学作品的名称是作品不可缺少的一部分，它高度概括了作品的深层内涵，体现了一本书的内容和作者的创作意图。读者对作品第一印象的好坏往往取决于该作品的书名。但是，又如何把英语书名翻译成汉语呢？这的确并非易事。在翻译过程中，我们会遇到很多问题。由于一些原因，书名翻译与其他翻译有所区别，有些译者能够翻译出得到广泛认同的书名，有些则不然。针对文学作品中的小说这一类别，本课题将从目的论角度对书名的翻译进行研究，分析探讨其在翻译过程中所应坚持的方法，旨在使译者在进行书名翻译时更多地认识和了解到什么时候采用直译、什么时候采用意译，在运用直译与意译的时候所应该掌握的技巧、遵循的原则和应该注意的问题，最终达到提高翻译能力及水平的目的。

关键词：目的论；小说书名翻译；翻译方法

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. About Novel Titles 2

2.1 Novel Titles 2

2.2 Functions of Novel Titles 2

2.3 Some Problems of Translation of Novel Titles 3

3. The Skopos Theory 4

3.1 Three Rules of the Skopos Theory 4

3.2 Significance of the Application of the Skopos Theory to Novel Titles Translation 5

4. Translation Methods 6

4.1 Literal Translation 7

4.2 The Combination of Literal Translation and Explanation 7

4.3 Liberal Translation 8

4.4 The Combination of Literal Translation and Liberal Translation 9

4.5 Two Wrong Translation Tendencies 11

5.Conclusion 12

Works Cited 14

1. Introduction

With a rapid development of the market-oriented economy and under the context of globalization, the exchange of information and culture becomes increasingly important and frequent. As a carrier of information and culture, the input and output of novels of different countries no doubt play an overwhelming role. The translation of novel titles, because of the novel titles’ special status and function, constantly perplexes many translators. Term or name translation is difficult, so is novel titles translation. The former is a premise and base of the latter while the latter is an extension and advance of the former. A good translation of name or title can make a literature masterpiece popular among the world, and make it a bright pearl of world cultural heritages. Nevertheless, a good English novel title cannot necessarily be translated into an accepted Chinese title, or vice versa. To sum up, the two have a strong interaction effect.

A famous Chinese translator Ge Baoquan has published an essay on the Yilin magazine, where he has said that translation involves five difficulties. One of these difficulties is associated with novel titles or themes, which is “difficulty of translation on novel titles”. (Ge Baoquan, 1990:51). One typical example is James Joyes’s last works: Finnegan’s Wake. It is difficult to translate it into Chinese, and it is said that at least there are ten translation versions: 《芬尼根的守灵夜》、《芬尼根的觉醒》、《为芬尼根守灵》、《菲尼跟维克》and so on. It is not easy to judge whether it is right or not.

Although the translation of novel’s title is difficult, it doesn’t mean we cannot translate it. During the practice of novel title translation, in fact, it is an act with a strong purpose. It needs to take many factors into consideration, such as culture, context. These various factors affect what principles and strategies of translation translators will choose. In a word, translation of novel titles is purpose-oriented.

So far, there are a few articles or essays talking about strategies of translating English novel titles into Chinese. Based on the Skopos theory, this essay will briefly discuss some methods on it, intending to offer a few commonplace remarks by way of introduction so that others may come up with valuable opinions.

This paper is divided into five parts. The first part is a general introduction about this thesis, including significance and framework of this paper. The second part presents a brief introduction of a novel title’s definition and its functions. What is more, some problems that the translators may encounter when translating the novel titles and the scholars’ contribution to solving these problems will be also presented. Then the third part is a general introduction of the skopos theory and the three principles of it and the significance of the application of the skopos theory in novel title translation. The fourth part presents some methods of translating novel titles. Finally, the last part is the discussion and conclusion of the applicability of the skopos theory of novel titles translation.

In a word, this essay aims to discuss effective methods of translating novel titles from the perspective of the skopos, with the aim of improving the translating skills of novel titles.

2. About Novel Titles

2.1 Novel Titles

A title is the name of a piece of work and cannot be omitted. Usually, a novel title is brief, original, vivid and striking, as a window for readers to learn about it. A good novel title can not only indicate the writer’s intention but also leave a very good impression on readers.

The title has formed its own characteristics in the long historical process. Different from other types of text, the literature titles are usually named after the main character, such as David Copperfield《大卫·科波菲尔》. Literature titles also named after the time and of the place the story in the novel taking place, such as On the Road《在路上》. What is more, in order to attract the readers" attention, some titles employ cultural allusions or proverbs. For example, Emit Hemingway"s The Sun Also Rises comes from a quotation of The Bible (Liu Biyu, 2012:79).

In this paper, we mainly discuss the titles of English novels. An English novel title is usually made up of a noun phrase, a preposition phrase, a participial phrase or an elliptical sentence.

2.2 Functions of Novel Titles

There is no doubt that a title is a vital part of a novel from which readers can get a brief knowledge of the novel. What functions should a title perform? A title should set the tone of the writing and convey information about what he/she is going to write about. What is more, the title should contain something that may attract the readers’ attention. The writer must take many factors into account. Thus a title is of great importance and it must appeal to the potential readers. In the modern society, whether the novel title is eye-catching, to a large degree, affects the selling and the popularity of the novel. In fact, many readers would decide to buy or not to buy a novel just because of the title. Therefore, the novel author as well as the publisher must attach great importance to the novel title (Chen Lin, 2009:216).

A literature novel title is mainly to provide readers with the core information and to arouse readers’ reading interest. Generally speaking, it has the informational function, imperative function and aesthetic function. These three functions play a dominant role in novel titles translation. First of all, as far as content of information is concerned, information function mainly provides the theme and content of the work. When readers are influenced by information content and form, then imperative function will spur the changes of someone’s behavior or action. Based on the topic structure and rhetoric level of title translation, the appeal and effectiveness of titles embody aesthetic information and improve the influences of the utterance.

2.3 Some Problems of Translation of Novel Titles

There are many problems in the course of English novel titles translation. To begin with, there exist several titles at the same time in some cases. For instance, Gone With The Wind is translated into《乱世佳人》and《飘》, The Great Gatesby is translated into《永恒之恋》、《大哉！盖世比》、《了不起的盖茨比》and《大亨小传》, Oliver Twist《雾都孤儿》and《奥列佛·退斯特》, Great Expectations《远大前程》and《孤星血泪》, etc.

Second, a novel title sometimes doesn’t conform to the Chinese customs and thus cannot arouse the readers’ reading interest, even causing readers’ antipathy and affecting the sales of the novel. Western literary works often entitle a novel in the name of the main character, such as Olive Twist，David Copperfield，Robinson Crusoe and so on. If they are literally translated into《奥列佛·退斯特》, 《大卫·科波菲尔》, 《鲁滨逊·克鲁索》, Chinese readers will not get enough and specific information to the greatest extent and sometimes may regard it as a biography.

Third, some novel titles against or lacking cultural connotation will perplex potential readers. Emit Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises was original translated into《太阳也升起》, but the name was changed later because the title comes from a sentence of The Bible. Thus only we learn this literary quotation can we make a proper Chinese name.《太阳照样升起》appropriately transfers its cultural connotation (Liu Biyu, 2012:80).

There are still many other problems and the writer is not going to go through any more examples of that. Indeed, a title is the soul and an indispensible part of a novel. The improper translation of a novel title will greatly influence the work’s spirit connotation. The worst effect is on the translator"s literary accomplishment. A translator with a good literary accomplishment can grasp works’ spirit and emotion and understand the content of a title, including implication, irony, ridicule or reference, all of which can better pass on the original meaning of the works and make a title translation perfect.

On the basis of the previous studies, this paper will present some strategies of novel titles translation from the perspective of the Skopos Theory and it can give the readers a new view of novel title translation.

3. The Skopos Theory

3.1 Three Rules of the Skopos Theory

The Skopos Theory involves three main rules, they are skopos rule, coherence rule and fidelity rule.

"Skopos" is a Greek word for "aim" or "purpose". "Skopos rule" means a translational action is determined by its Skopos. The purpose of translation behavior to be achieved determines the overall behavior of the translation process, namely methods determines results.

The coherence rule states that the target text must be interpretable as coherent with the target text receiver"s situation. In other words, the target text must be translated in such a way that it is coherent for the target text receivers, given their circumstances and knowledge (Reiss and Vermeer 1984:113).

The third rule is loyalty rule. It is expected to bear some relationship with the corresponding source text.

3.2 Significance of the Application of the Skopos Theory to Novel Titles Translation

One person will do something with his/her own purpose, so will novel title translation. Through a novel title, readers can have a brief understanding of what the novel will tell them and they will decide whether to buy or not. Thus we can say a good novel title can attract many more potential buyers and enlarge its popularity among people.

The novel title in the source text can be regarded as an “offer of information” (Vermeer 1987:54). A translator chooses some information that he or she believes that is of great use to the translation. The translators are nurtured by different cultures and customs thus they have their own different knowledge structure and experiences as well as their own unique world outlook, life outlook and values. The translator, thus, has the initiative in translation work. He or she can freely choose any kind of translation strategy according to a certain translation purpose. Even the same source text, in many cases, can be translated into different versions according to a translator’s aim or purpose.

From the novel titles we can see, many of them have no relation with the original ones. For example, The Arabian Nights is translated into《天方夜谭》, Oliver Twist is translated into《雾都孤儿》, Rebecca is translated into《蝴蝶梦》, etc. To some degree, some people may argue that it is against the rule of loyalty. However, the reality requires the translator to translate the novel titles against the traditional rule of loyalty. On one hand, some novel titles, though against the rule of loyalty, are good enough and popular among the readers and circulated through the years. Vermeer proposed that "Every translation is directed at an intended audience, since to translate means to produce a text in a target setting for a target purpose and target addressed in target circumstances." (Chen Lin, 2009: 216). In other words, the faithfulness, equivalence in the traditional translation theories should conform to the skopos or purpose of the translation. On the other hand, a novel title translation should conform to the skopos rule. Also, it should satisfy the needs and cater to tastes of its readers of the target language. At the same time, a good novel title can expand a better sales market. Thus, it is very possible that a translator cannot copy the original title and translate it into a title fitting to the culture and market of the target language.

Generally speaking, communication between the sender and the receiver in the same culture goes smoothly, but in intercultural communication, many difficulties would arise and the existing theories cannot solve the problems, so the emergency of the Skopos theory provides the translators with a new kind of translation strategy and method. By employing the Skopos theory, it is possible to find some approaches to the problems in novel titles translation. This theory explains the reason why the translator translates the novel titles into the ones which are not loyal to the original ones. The skopos theory not only allows but requires the translators to translate the novel titles according to the skopos theory or his/her intention without abiding by the rule of loyalty.

Therefore, the novel title translation is of great importance and deserves the translators’ time and energy. It is necessary to apply the Skopos Theory to novel titles translation.

4. Translation Methods

Novel titles translation is a process of recreation. In order to make the target text conform to the culture and customs of the target language, a translator should well understand the content of one novel and make a proper or complete adaption. Then this translation is more accepted by the target language readers.

Literal translation and liberal translation are the most important translation methods and have their own characteristics. The following chapters will analyze the employment of the two translation methods on the basis of practical translation examples.

4.1 Literal Translation

Professor Liu Zhongde has said that literal translation, as the most common and most important translation approach, treats sentences as basic units and meanwhile takes the whole text into consideration. Literal translation preserves in the version both the original form and content, including sentence structures, rhetorical devices, writing style and the basic tone, as well as implicit and explicit meaning of the source language text.

In his novel Several Pairs of Contradictions in Translation, Xu Yuanchong has made a more accepted definition of literal translation. For literal translation, the loyalty to the content of the source text should be put in the first place, then is the faithfulness to the form of the original work and the last is the smooth translation form of the target text (Luo Xinzhang, 1984:278).

Someone estimates that 75% sentences are handled by the literal translation method in the process of translation. The following will present some examples. For instance, Romeo and Juliet is translated into《罗密欧与朱丽叶》, The Grapes of Wrath is translated into《愤怒的葡萄》, Jane Eyre is translated into《简爱》, Gulliver’s Travels is translated into《格利佛游记》, Vanity Fair is translated into《名利场》, Pride and Prejudice is translated into《傲慢与偏见》, Uncle Tom"s Cabin is translated into《汤姆叔叔的小屋》, Dances With Wolves is translated into《与狼共舞》， Jurassic Park is translated into《侏罗纪公园》， The Old Man and the Sea is translated into《老人与海》， The Prince and the Pauper is translated into《王子与贫儿》， etc. These titles are simple, vivid and can straightly tell readers the main content or characters, thus successfully attracting readers’ attention and interest.

Take Farewell to Arms as a typical example. Translator Song Biyun translated it into《战地春梦》according to liberal translation method. This title, however, only puts emphasis on the pun meaning of "arms" and cannot reflect the theme of fighting against imperialist war. Thus in order to conform to its content and embody the writer’s war-weary thinking, it should be literally translated into《永别了，武器》， which is more accepted and popular among readers and translators(Liu Kongxi, 2009:97-98).

4.2 The Combination of Literal Translation and Explanation

Chinese language and English language are different, so are the literature styles of Chinese and English literary works. English novels often be named after a hero or heroine, while Chinese writers usually tend to reveal the theme in the novel titles. Therefore, if novel titles are literally translated, the translated ones are possibly not attractive enough to the target readers. Thus, if these novel titles are translated by adding some explanation, it will be much easier for the target readers to understand and have a general idea of the novel.

For example, if Robinson Crusoe was literally translated into《鲁滨逊·克鲁索》， readers would wonder who would be Robinson Crusoe and what the novel would tell them. Thus《鲁滨逊漂流记》will be better because the three words “漂流记” clearly explains to readers what the theme of the novel and what the novel is about, and this title can be more attractive among potential readers. Literal translation of Tom Sawyer is《汤姆·莎耶》. If it is translated into《汤姆·莎耶历险记》, this translation version is better than the former and more faithful to the content of the source text. Blood and Sand describes a matador"s ups and downs of life as well as deeply reflecting the real appearance and social problems of Spanish class society at that time. Thus《血与沙》is simple, ordinary and inane, while《碧血黄沙》has a bright colorful image.

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