Background of functionalist translation theory
history, one clearly knows that functionalist translation theory dose not appear all of a sudden. During 1950s and 1960s, linguistics was the dominant discipline in human language. Similarly, the equivalence-based linguistic approaches were prevalent in translation theory field. “Equivalence-based linguistic approaches focused on the source text, the features of which had to be preserved in the target text” and “many equivalence-based linguistic translation theorists held the view that any target text that was not equivalent to the corresponding source text was a non-translation”. However, there wFunctionalist translation theory emerged in Germany in the 1970s. Throughout translation theoryere many cases of non-equivalence in translation practice. For instance, in order to facilitate target audience in understanding translated text, adaptive translations could be permitted in the translation of pragmatic text. In such situation, there were many controversies on equivalence-based linguistic approach. Thus a new theory was called for.
Therefore, German functionalist approaches emerged as a new theory. After its appearance, functionalist translation theory has been developed by four famous scholars since they came into being. Each of them has inherited some ideas from previous ones and formed the theory of their own. The following part will illustrate functionalist translation theory develops.
Development
1Katharina Reiss and Translation Criticism（Text Typology）
In the 1960s, equivalence-based linguistic approaches have a great influence on her. In 1971, she published her book Possibilities and Limitation of Translation Criticism, introducing a functional category into her translation criticism. In this book, she put forward a model of translation criticism based on the functional relationship between the source and the target text.
Although Reiss knew the importance of functions of texts in translation and developed her text-bound approach, she still could not break through the scope of source-text equivalence. Therefore, it could be said that Reiss’s theory only has the color of functionalist, and it is just a transitional theory from equivalence-based linguistic approaches to German functionalist approaches. However, Reiss’s theory attracts later scholars’ attention, which promotes the development of German functionalist approaches. Hans J. Vermeer is one of the scholars who devote themselves to doing some research on the functionalist theory.
2Hans J. Vermeer and Skopos Theory
He is a leading exponent of German functionalist approaches because his Skopos theory has laid a firm foundation for them. Vermeer tried to reveal a major breakthrough in equivalence theory and developed his own theory. However, Reiss paid less attention to the source text. He concerned much more about some factors which were related to the target text. He regarded translation as “a type of human action”. Since “any action has an aim, a purpose”, so does translation. In order to describe the aim or purpose of a translation, he introduces “Skopos” into his translation theory.
Although Vermeer’s Skopos theory provides a new perspective for further development of German functionalist approaches, it also has some limitations and been criticized by many scholars. Some scholars criticize that the biggest problem of Skopos theory is that “not all actions have an aim, some have no aim”. In fact, these criticisms make more and more scholars pay much attention to the functionalist theory, which promotes the development of German functionalist approaches in some degree.
3Justa and Translation Action
She is another figure who develops functionalist translation theory. A characteristic of her theory is that she brought some new terms to translation field for supporting her theory. Besides, she pointed out the purpose of translational action was to transfer messages across culture and language barriers by menas of message transmitters produced by experts. In her theory, she emphasized not only the variety of text but also the importance of translator in cross-cultural communication. Another characteristic of her theory is that she paid much attention to the intertexture and extratextual aspects of the communicative action. She stressed that the participants and situational conditions could influence the decision making of translation strategies by the translation brief in translation process.
To summarize, Justa mainly makes two contributions to the translation field. One is that “translation action” enlarges the range of translation studies. The other is that the subjectivity of translator could be stressed. However, there also exist some problems in her theory. One is that the new terms hinder the application of her theory. Another is that the status of the source text could nearly be neglected.
Compared with Vermeer’s theory, Justa thinks that the target text could be independent from the source text, her theory dethrones the status of the source text in a more radical way.
