Abstract

English abstract plays an important role in academic exchange and cooperation. In recent years, researches of English abstract have been conducted from different perspectives by many scholars. However, the issue has seldom been approached from functionalism orientation. This paper, under the guidance of the framework of functionalism especially skopos theory and text typology, researches on the English abstract of graduation thesis in combination with some examples. The study found that the English abstracts in graduation thesis are subject to the following problems: information missing, terms misuse, improper collocation of words, misuse of person and tenses, sentences with no subject and so on. These problems are mainly due to many students lack of professional knowledge as well as unawareness of translation theory. In view of these questions, this paper then discusses some corresponding translation principles in order to improve the quality of the thesis abstract translation.

Keywords: functionalist translation theory; graduation paper; English abstract; translation principle

Contents

Abstract

摘要

1. Introduction-1

2. Literature Review-1

2.1 Studies on academic abstracts-1

2.2 Previous studies on academic abstracts translation-3

3. Theoretical Framework-4

3.1 Functionalism-4

3.2 Text typology-5

3.3 Skopos theory-6

4. Abstract Translation from the Perspective of Functionalism-6

4.1 The main problems of English abstract in graduation papers-6

4.2 Abstract translation principles based on functionalism-11

5. Conclusion-14

Works cited-15