1.2 The Significance of the Research

In 2011, the 17th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China made the decision that it was a national goal to build our country into a socialist cultural superpower after a whole plenary session pertinent to the issue of culture. And in 2014, President Xi Jinping announced that we should increase China’s soft power, and present a good Chinese narrative so as to better communicate China’s messages to the world.

     Under such circumstances, the thesis conducts a study of the relation between translation and cultural soft power within the framework of the Skopostheorie. According to the research by the author of this thesis, previous studies are focused on either translation or cultural soft power. This thesis, however, combines translation with cultural soft power and makes a case study of the relation between these two, with the  purpose of arguing that how the Skopostheorie guides the translator to produce works that makes the target readers well informed of Chinese culture and how such a  translation helps enhance China’s cultural soft power.

1.3 The Research Questions

In order to realise the research purpose mentioned above, the thesis attempts to answer the following questions:

How does the Skopostheorie help the translator in the process of translation?

What translation strategies and methods are adopted by Anthony C. Yu in his translation under the guidance of the Skopostheorie?

How can translation help enhance China’s cultural soft power?

1.4 The Overall Structure of the Thesis

The thesis altogether contains five chapters. In Chapter One, the author of the thesis presents the purpose of the research, the significance of the research as well as the research questions; Chapter Two briefly introduces the definitions of cultural soft power, the Skopostheorie, and states the relation between translation and cultural soft power as well as the possibility of carrying out a research on the relation between translation and cultural soft power from the perspective of the Skopostheorie; Chapter Three presents in detail the methodology of the research and relevant translation strategies and methods applied by Anthony C. Yu in his English translation; the author of the thesis makes a case study in Chapter Four of Anthony C. Yu’s English version of The Journey to the West written by Wu Chengen, a famous novelist of the Ming Dynasty; and Chapter Five states the major findings of the thesis, presents the limitations of the research and gives recommendations to future researchers for further studies.