Abstract

The Gift of Magi is one of the best representative works by O.Henry, a famous short story writer in America who used his unique artistic technique to expose the living conditions of the underprivileged people and to explore the pure hope and beauty in people’s mind in society. It is his unique writing style that attracts many scholars to conduct researches on his works. However, most studies are started from the perspective of language, style, writing style and emotion, and the research from the perspective of translation study is rare.
The thesis makes a comparative study on different Chinese versions (including Wang Zhongnian’s, Zhang Jinghao’s, Li Wenjun’s and Shi Xiangqian’s ) of The Gift of Magi from the perspective of skopos theory. Based on the three major rules of skopos theory (the skopos rule, the coherence rule and the loyalty rule), the translation of The Gift of Magi will be studied on the levels of word, phrase and sentence so as to analyze the impact of different translation purposes on the translation.

Key words: Skopos Theory; The Gift of Magi; Comparative Study on Chinese Version 

摘要

《麦琪的礼物》是美国著名短篇小说家欧•亨利小说中最优秀、最具代表性的作品之一。欧•亨利以其独特的艺术手法，不仅揭露了社会底层人员的生活状态，更重要的是发掘出在这种扭曲的社会环境下人们心中单纯的希望与美好。正是这种独特的写作手法，引得无数学者对其作品进行研究分析。然而，大多数研究是从语言、文体、写作手法和情感等角度来进行，真正从翻译角度进行的研究却是少之又少。
本文将从一个新的角度，即翻译角度出发，以翻译目的论为理论基础，以王仲年、张经浩、李文俊和石向骞等译者的《麦琪的礼物》为研究对象，从目的原则、连贯性原则和忠实性原则等三个原则着手，通过对译本中字、词、段落的翻译差异，探讨翻译目的对译本的影响。

关键词：翻译目的论；《麦琪的礼物》；译本对比研究