Comparative Study of Chinese Bible Translations from the Perspective of Skopos Theory

摘要

It is universally acknowledged that the holy Bible has played a significant role in both Christianity and literature field. In China, translating Bible also enjoyed a long history and so far over 30 Chinese Bible translations have been produced. Along with age-old Bible translating practices in China come with varied Chinese Bible versions, due to the fact that different translators adopt different translational skopos. Skpos theory, mainly coined by Vermeer, has been quite popular in recent years. This purpose-based translation theory has ignited paradigm shift in translation study from the source text to target text. This paper will be attempting to conduct a comparative study of two most popular modern Chinese Bible versions, CUV (Chinese Union Version) and TCV (Today’s Chinese Version). By comparing two versions of the same extract, this article aims to apply Skopos theory into analyzing each translator’s decisions and strategies from domestication and foreignization.