The core theory of functionalist theory, skopostheorie, was put forward by Hans Vermeer and he also defined translation as a human action which is intentional, purposeful and taking place in a given situation. Meanwhile, he introduced “aim, purpose, intention and function” into the theory to describe different skopos such as skopos of translators, skopos of communication and skopos of special translation strategies involved. In his theory framework, translation produces a text to meet certain demands and certain receivers in the context of target language; therefore, the receiver finally determines the skopos of the translation. Based on the skopostheorie, Vermeer’s theory also included the coherence principle and loyalty principle while loyalty is based on coherence. Loyalty principle is similar to the equivalence theory, so Qian Shaochang(2000) admired the breakthrough of Vermeer and pointed out he pushed translation from text transformation to culture transformation to certain extent.

Another contributor to functionalist theory Justa Holz Manttari emphasized more on the action part of translation and she applied the theory to more than text translation and tended to focus on the participators in translation and environment elements of translation action in her book “Theory of Translation Action”. 《唐顿庄园》字幕翻译和译制片翻译策略和接受度比较(3):http://www.751com.cn/yingyu/lunwen_12012.html