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In the translation field of China, a lot of Chinese scholars have taken researches and analysis on Nida's theory of functional equivalence. Widely accepted, functional equivalence theory is one of the most influential translation theories and is frequently used as guidance in translating literary works.
From the perspective of Nida’s functional equivalence theory, this paper aims to explore the realization of functional equivalence in the two English versions of Kong Yiji, a short story written by Lu Xun. This is the second colloquial story after Kuang Ren Ri Ji. Kong Yiji talks about the tragedy of the main character, which is caused by the feudal decadent ideas and feudal imperial examination system. Though this story is within three thousand words, it has great symbolized meaning and practical significance.
Lu Xun’ s works are of high popularity and reputation both at home and abroad. As his novels always contains a lot of culture-loaded words, idioms, and the mix of classical style of writing and colloquial Chinese, many difficulties in translation arises. This paper chooses two English versions, quite highly remarked, to take a research to see if the meaning, culture and style are well conveyed in the translations. By analyzing Lovell and Yan Xianyi’s translation ways used in Kong Yiji, viewing from the level of word, sentences, and the discourse, the paper tries to find out how their translations achieve functional equivalence and whether they successfully realize the closet natural equivalence, at the main while, to find some the features in literal translation.
1.2 Methodology of the research
In order to make a study of Kong Yiji from the Perspective of Functional Equivalence, literature study is carried out at first. To get the research background, the translation theory, novel, author and two translations are to be read. Then it comes to the comparative study, using comparison and contrast, through sample-analysis to access the two versions if their meaning, culture and style are close to a natural equivalence.
1.3 Organization of the thesis
This paper consists of six chapters. Chapter one is an introduction in which the aims of research, methodology of the research, and organization of the thesis are presented. Chapter two is the literature review, which gives a literature review of this paper, introducing about Nida and his functional equivalence theory and its varying degrees., Lu Xun and his short novel Kong Yiji, and the two English version of the novel as well as the two famous translator Yang Xianyi(and his wife Dai Naidie) and Julia Lovell. Chapter three is the most important part. It makes a comparison between the two English versions of Kong Yiji from the perspective of Nida’s functional equivalence on the levels of word, sentence and discourse, including the two translators’ different translations samples to see if their translations have meet the request of meaning, culture and style. Chapter four is a conclusion, summarizing the research findings and the limitations of this study.
2. literature review
2.1 Nida and the theory of Functional Equivalence
Eugene A．Nida, born in Oklahoma city in 1914, is an American linguist, translator and translation theorist. He got his doctor degree in linguistics of the University of Michigan in 1943. Nida has spent all his life translating Bible and doing researches on translating theories. He is absolutely a very great influential scholar in the field of translation.
In 1964, Nida published his most influential work, Towards a Science of Translating and The Theory and Practice of Translation the next year. Taking Chomsky’s Transformational-generative grammar in to the research on translation theories, Nida put forward his core theory: Dynamic equivalence, which was changed into functional equivalence latter. Dynamic equivalence means that “Translating consists in reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source message, first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style” (Nida&Taber, 1969). From this, we can see that Nida focus more on the content and spirit of the source text rather than the form, trying to realize the equivalence in form between the translation and the original work as close as possible under the condition that the original content is conveyed. Under some circumstance it is hard to achieve equivalence both in content and form. In this case, referring from Nida’s opinion, the form can be ignored. However, many people have mistaken the dynamic equivalence theory as free translation, considering that Nida lays preference merely on translating the content and neglects the linguistic form. Thus, in order to avoid such misunderstand, Nida changed “dynamic equvalence” to “functional equivalence” in From One Language to Another (1986) to emphasis the communicative function of translating, which means that the version and the text should be equivalent in linguistic function rather than simply the linguistic form. Then, what is the reference to judge whether the text and the version have realized the equivalence? Nida thinks the answer should be readers’ response, so if the readers of target text give the accordingly response as the readers of the original text, the translation can be considered successful. In fact, in the phase of dynamic equivalence, Nida has already paod attention to receptors’ response: “Dynamic equivalence is defined in terms of degree to which the receptors of the message in the receptor language respond to it in substantially the same manner as the receptors in the source language.” (Nida&Taber, 1969) Later, in Language and Culture: Context in Translating (2001), functional equivalence is pided into two level, minimal level and maximal level. A minimal functional equivalence means that “The readers of can conceive of how the original readers of the text must have understood and appreciated it.” And a maximal functional equivalence is defined as “The readers of a translated text should be able to understand and appreciate it in essentially the same manner as the original readers did.” (Nida, 2001) It is “rarely achieved, except for texts having little or no aesthetic value and involving only routine information.” (Nida, 2001) The minimal level is the elementary request and translation below it is unacceptable. Good translation is in between of the two levels.