Abstract: Sidney Shapiro is the famous American-Chinese translator and Shui Hu Zhuan rendered by him is regarded as the best English version till now.This paper collects the relative paratextual elements systematically，makes good use of historical value of paratexts to explore Shapiro's translation purpose，strategy and experience，and interprets the translator’s subjectivity comprehensively.The paper also hopes to enrich the dimension of Shapiro’s study and deepen the study of Shui Hu Zhuan translated by him.