Evaluation on the Significance and Shortcomings of German Functionalist Vermeer’s Skopos Theory

Vermeer’s Skopos Theory has much significance. It gives us a new way of thinking about the concept of translation and the role of translator and target reader in the translation process. However, it also has some shortcomings, including the ambiguity of the “skopos”, the undervaluation of source text and writer, the unfalsifiability of Skopos Theory and the ambiguity of evaluation criteria for the target text.