In the 1960s, translation theorists usually studied translation from the linguistic perspective。 Under the condition that a larger number of people realized the shortcomings and insufficiency of only caring about the linguistic change because of the negative influence of traditional translation theories, German translation theorists came up with the functionalism approach。 

There are four very important persons who made an outstanding contribution to the outcome of this great theory。 It is their efforts that brings such a great achievement in the area of translation theory。   

The first one is Katharina Reiss, an experienced translator。 In 1971, she has  already realized that it is impossible to translate Jose Ortegay Gasset’s famous Spanish essay Miseria esplendor de la traduccion(Misery and Splendour of Translation) from the perspective of equivalence, mainly for 2 reasons。 The first reason is the differences between the target purpose and the original one。 Another reason is differences between the target readers and the original readers。 It is obvious that the translation critics should also consider the target text rather than only take the source text into consideration。