A Comparative Study Of The Two Chinese Versions Of An American Tragedy

In light of Nida's "functional equivalence", this thesis makes a comparative study of corresponding extracts from two Chinese versions of Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy. The aim is to find practical approaches which will lead to the closest natural equivalence in the target language.This thesis falls into four chapters. The first chapter gives a brief introduction to Nida's theory of "functional equivalence" and its application in literary translation. The second deals with the introduction of An American Tragedy, its author and the two Chinese versions. Chapter Three, the main body of the thesis, offers a detailed comparison between two Chinese versions to show whether the message in the source language is reproduced in the receptor language, in terms of meaning, style and culture. The fourth chapter summarizes some problems in the two versions and abiding by Nida's theory of "functional equivalence", the writer of this thesis offers a tentative translation.From the comparative study, the following conclusion has been drawn:To achieve functional equivalence in meaning, the translator must take full account of all aspects such as lexicon, syntax and context; the translator should try his best to transfer the stylistic features of the original work to allow his readers to enjoy the identical, or at least similar, aesthetic experience as the readers of the original; when translating cultural words, the translator must strive to make his translation easy for the readers to understand, but he must at the same time guard against too much assimilation of the original language into the receptor language.