On Some Dialogue Translation Mistakes in Little Women (1933)—From the Perspective of Skopos Theory

Abstract

According to Skopos Theory, the Skopos of translation determines the methods and the strategies in translation. Films are created for the audience with the audience’s acceptance and appreciation as the basic principle. Thus the specialty of films requires that translators are supposed to consider more about the audience’s expectation horizon, aesthetic taste and ability of acceptance rather than only the source language and cultural information. Adopting German functional classical theory, Skopos theory, as the theoretical base and the previous studies of various aspects of film translation as the practical requirements, this paper attempts to construct a tentative analysis of dialogue translation mistakes in Little Women (1933), with an attempt to illustrate some strategies rather than literal translation should be adopted in film translation to meet its specified requirements and to follow the flow of film.