Which principles of Equivalence Theory Zhang Peiji adopted in his Selected Modern Chinese Essays and in what sense does Nida’s Functional Equivalence Theory contribute to prose translation are the objectives of this study.

The study could be helpful to research on prose translation theoretically and practically. The research on prose study might be emphasized in future. And the study would laid foundation for further research on the application of Nida’s Functional Equivalence in literary translation, more evidence are added to support the study.

2. Literature Review

2.1 Previous Studies on Nida’s Functional Equivalence

    “Functional Equivalence” is a key concept in Nida’s translation theory. It was first called Dynamic equivalence in 1964, in order to avoid misunderstandings on the theory, Nida changed its name into dynamic equivalence.

    Functional Equivalence has been studied by many Chinese scholars and researchers like Jin Di ,Tan Zaixi ,Ma Huijuan. Besides, some university graduates have worked on Nida’s translation theory in their papers.

    Jin Di has similar views with Nida about the role of receptors in translation when he did not know about Nida’s dynamic equivalence theory. In On Translation :with special reference to Chinese to English(1984,with Nida), to a large degree he adopted Nida’s dynamic equivalence, namely,” the relation of target language receptors to the target language text should be roughly equivalent to the relationship between the original text”. And he proved the validity of dynamic equivalence in dealing with many difficulties involved in Chinese—English and English—Chinese translation with many convincing examples from his own experience as a translator and translation consultant. He discusses the theory in his book A Research on Equivalence Theory, which includes its nature, principle and development. And he mentioned two relationships, respectively, the relationship between accuracy and flexibility, the relationship between accuracy and smoothness.

    Tan Zaixi did a large amount of work on Nida’s Translation theory, he is an important person in doing the research on Nida’s Translation Theory. He introduces Nida’s theory in his book Nida’s theory on translation, which became the best-seller a year after it was published (1984).It covers the nature of translation, communicative function of language, lexical meaning, figurative meaning and so on. And it gives a pision of development of Nida’s theory. Tan also mentioned the great influence of Nida’s theory on the development of translation. In his book A short History of Translation in the West, the western translation theories are briefly introduced, including Nida’s functional equivalence theory. Besides, he gave an objective comment on Nida’s Translation Theory by pointing out some limitations in the theory.

Ma Huiguan makes a deep research on Nida’s Translation Theory in her book A Study on Nida’s Translation Theory. The book discusses the development of Nida’s Translation Theory in China and in the western world, introduces Nida’s views on translation, like Nida’s concept of translation equivalence, talks about the application of Nida’s Translation Theory in Bible Translation, explores its validity and limitations in literary translation. Functional Equivalence Theory, which was first called Dynamic Equivalence Theory, was mentioned in the book, Ma gives a brief introduction of its different phases, namely, Dynamic Equivalence and Formal Equivalence, Dynamic Equivalence and Formal Correspondence, Functional Equivalence and Formal Correspondence. And controversy over dynamic equivalence was referred to as well.