In opposition to the views of philologists who maintain that the understanding of the source text can be achieved by assessing the inter-animation of words on the page, and that meaning is self-contained within the text, linguistic school discusses approaches to “equivalence” from the aspect of language elements. Eugene Nida, one major figure of linguistic school, raised the theory of Dynamic Equivalence, later developed to Functional Equivalence.
Susan Bassnett stood out as a representative of cultural school, who further expanded Nida’s theory. According to her, translation, a behavior far beyond linguistic concept, is deeply rooted in the culture it belongs to; thus, translation is the communication between two cultures and translation “equivalence” exists in cultural function. She then stated that the “unit” of translation is culture rather than textual elements, translation is more about communication than simply decode-reconstruct processing, with the purpose to fit different cultures and different groups of readers in a certain culture.
Back in China, ancient translation theory germinated along the translation of Buddhist sutra. Modern Chinese translators boomed after the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 when Yan Fu put forward that good translation works should be featured with “faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance”, guidance to translators of the next several generations until today.
2.1.2 A Review of the Ancient Chinese Poetry Translation
Among the four great ancient civilizations, China remains the only one whose culture continues to the present, contributing voluminous and valuable literary works going down to the human history. Whereas Chinese classics have always been passed on and cherished for generations, professional translation of these classics into foreign languages didn’t flourish until 1970s.
To take English translation of Chinese poems as an example, there has been debate over whether ancient Chinese poetry should be translated by Chinese. Prof. Graham from University of London once stated, in his translation work of the late Tang Poem, that Chinese are not eligible for English translation of Tang poems.
Nevertheless, with the multitudes of brilliant translators emerging and increasing volumes of works coming out, it is fair to say Chinese translators rank the first class in translating classics of their own culture.
As regard to the difference between translating prose and poetry, Xu Yuanchong recited the concepts of explicit sense and implicit sense by Yuan Xingpei, that explicit sense applies to the plain-spoken meaning leaving no room for misunderstandings; while implicit sense, which is unique to poems. Xu in his book The Art of Translation (《翻译的艺术》) put forth the principle of beauty —beauty in sense, sound and form, which provided direction for poetry translation. He then pointed the three approaches: deep-going, simplification and seeking equivalence, “三美（意美，音美，形美），三化（深化法，浅化法，等化法），三之（知之，好之，乐之）”so as to enable the readers to understand it, appreciate it and thus entertain themselves during the reading process.
2.2 Equivalence Theory
Traced back to the late 20th Century, Equivalence Theory prevailed as a major theory in Western countries. Vinay and Darbelnet were pioneers in establishing the theory, but neither were as famous as Eugene A. Nida.
The prerequisite of this theory is the belief that there exists another kind of expression in the target language equivalent to the original text. The equivalence can be achieved in different spheres. According to Nida, attention should be paid on equivalence of function rather than language forms of two languages.
One merit of the theory is its focus on culture and readers. As the equivalence lies in readers’ judgments and readers base their judgments upon texts, the theory is text-based, which agrees with the reality of translation. 功能对等理论指导下的《红楼梦》诗歌翻译中的文化因素(3):http://www.751com.cn/yingyu/lunwen_42204.html