Study on the English Translation of Tongtong’s Summer from the Perspective of Skopos Theory

Abstract

President Xi Jinping has attached great importance to shaping global narratives for telling China’s stories in his speeches. Two Chinese Hugo award winners, Liu Cixin and Hao Jingfang, as well as their translator Ken Liu have made a great contribution to it and brought “Chinese Science Fiction (SF)” into a buzz topic. However, the current attention on Chinese SF is limited; more outstanding Chinese SF authors and stories deserve to be known. Thus, this paper chooses Ken Liu’s English translation of Tongtong’s Summer by Xia Jia, a Chinese SF rising star, as the main subject. This paper applies the case study approach and analyzes the translation methods from the angle of Skopos Theory. This study finds that Liu has stuck to the skopos rule with the use of addition and omission translation methods; followed the coherence rule through combination, rearrangement, and shift; abided by the fidelity rule by applying the methods of literal translation and paraphrase. By studying Liu’s translation methods, this study offers an opportunity for other translators to get the key to good translations, and obtain proper suggestions and guidance for SF or even other genres of Chinese literary works to be translated.