A famous Chinese translator Ge Baoquan has published an essay on the Yilin magazine, where he has said that translation involves five difficulties. One of these difficulties is associated with novel titles or themes, which is “difficulty of translation on novel titles”. (Ge Baoquan, 1990:51). One typical example is James Joyes’s last works: Finnegan’s Wake. It is difficult to translate it into Chinese, and it is said that at least there are ten translation versions:  《芬尼根的守灵夜》、《芬尼根的觉醒》、《为芬尼根守灵》、《菲尼跟维克》and so on. It is not easy to judge whether it is right or not.

Although the translation of novel’s title is difficult, it doesn’t mean we cannot translate it. During the practice of novel title translation, in fact, it is an act with a strong purpose. It needs to take many factors into consideration, such as culture, context. These various factors affect what principles and strategies of translation translators will choose. In a word, translation of novel titles is purpose-oriented.

So far, there are a few articles or essays talking about strategies of translating English novel titles into Chinese. Based on the Skopos theory, this essay will briefly discuss some methods on it, intending to offer a few commonplace remarks by way of introduction so that others may come up with valuable opinions. 

This paper is pided into five parts. The first part is a general introduction about this thesis, including significance and framework of this paper. The second part presents a brief introduction of a novel title’s definition and its functions. What is more, some problems that the translators may encounter when translating the novel titles and the scholars’ contribution to solving these problems will be also presented. Then the third part is a general introduction of the skopos theory and the three principles of it and the significance of the application of the skopos theory in novel title translation. The fourth part presents some methods of translating novel titles. Finally, the last part is the discussion and conclusion of the applicability of the skopos theory of novel titles translation. 

In a word, this essay aims to discuss effective methods of translating novel titles from the perspective of the skopos, with the aim of improving the translating skills of novel titles.源.自|吹冰,-论`文'网www.chuibin.com

2. About Novel Titles 

2.1 Novel Titles 

A title is the name of a piece of work and cannot be omitted. Usually, a novel title is brief, original, vivid and striking, as a window for readers to learn about it. A good novel title can not only indicate the writer’s intention but also leave a very good impression on readers.  

The title has formed its own characteristics in the long historical process. Different from other types of text, the literature titles are usually named after the main character, such as David Copperfield《大卫·科波菲尔》. Literature titles also named after the time and of the place the story in the novel taking place, such as On the Road《在路上》. What is more, in order to attract the readers' attention, some titles employ cultural allusions or proverbs. For example, Emit Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises comes from a quotation of The Bible (Liu Biyu, 2012:79).

In this paper, we mainly discuss the titles of English novels. An English novel title is usually made up of a noun phrase, a preposition phrase, a participial phrase or an elliptical sentence.

2.2 Functions of Novel Titles

There is no doubt that a title is a vital part of a novel from which readers can get a brief knowledge of the novel. What functions should a title perform? A title should set the tone of the writing and convey information about what he/she is going to write about. What is more, the title should contain something that may attract the readers’ attention. The writer must take many factors into account. Thus a title is of great importance and it must appeal to the potential readers. In the modern society, whether the novel title is eye-catching, to a large degree, affects the selling and the popularity of the novel. In fact, many readers would decide to buy or not to buy a novel just because of the title. Therefore, the novel author as well as the publisher must attach great importance to the novel title (Chen Lin, 2009:216).