Skopos theory翻译目的论.docx

Skopos theory: a retrospective assessment?Andrew Chesterman????????????????????????????????????????[2010a??????In W. Kallmeyer et al. (eds),?Perspektiven auf Kommunikation. Festschrift für Liisa Tittula zum 60. Geburtstag.?Berlin: SAXA Verlag, 209-225.]?1. Introduction??It is often said, especially by laymen, that translation does not really have a theory. Not true: it has lots! (Well, it depends what you want to call a theory; but still...)??But at least it does not have a general theory, right? Translation Studies has produced at best only a mixture of fragmentary theories. – This claim is not quite true either: we have several candidates which present themselves as general theories of translation. One them is skopos theory.It is now about a quarter of a century since the publication of Rei? and Vermeer’s classic work,?Grundlegung einer allgemeinen Translationstheorie?(1984), and even longer since the earliest publications on a functional approach to translation. Skopos theory, as a particular type of general functional theory, seems fairly well established on the map of translation studies, and is duly mentioned in all the textbooks. But how well has it stood the test of time? My aim here is to offer a general retrospective assessment of the theory, also taking account of some more recent criticism.?2. Axiomatic assumptions?Any theory rests on basic assumptions that are not tested within a given research paradigm, but are taken as given, self-evident, based on common sense and logic. We must start from somewhere, after all. But of course we can always query these assumptions if we wish, standing outside the paradigm. Some of them may be only implicit, hidden. But good theories aim to make all the relevant assumptions as explicit as possible, for instance as axioms from which the rest of the theoretical claims can be deduced. Skopos theory is unusual among other theories of translation, in that it has this form of a deductive, “syntactic” theory based on a small n