Dynamic Equivalence And Style Translation Of Literary Works

Enlightened by Eugene A. Nida's theory Dynamic Equivalence and Mr. Liu Miqing' s theory of Styles of Translation, this thesis aims at exploring the relationship between Dynamic Equivalence and style translation of literary works. Examples for illustration are taken from two translated versions (Mr. Lin Yutang's Six Chapters of A Floating Life and Mr. Shirley M. Black's Chapters From A Floating Life) of Shen Fu's work Fu Sheng Liu Ji to show how to best reproduce the original style.Just as Buffon puts it "style is man", literary works vary greatly in style and so do writers. Literary works are a kind of art expressed through language and in which readers can be aesthetically entertained, moved or enlightened by the beautiful language, different characters, neatly worked-out plots and even artistic images which combine to form the unique style of a given work.Style translation of literary works has long been a topic which appeals to scholars and translators from home and abroad. Though people' s opinions vary greatly in the recognizability and translatability of style, various theories, opinions and translation experience of some writers or translators have proved the fact that style is anything but nothing unimportant and it is recognizable and translatable.Mr. Liu Miqing tells us in his book Comparative Translation Theories that Styles of Translation focuses on the total significance of style of the original and acquires the stylistic adaptability of translation to the original style based on analysis of significance of style. According to this theory, the process of style translation has two procedures: firstly, digging out the total significance of style in source language; secondly, transforming the total significance of style. Inspired by his insightful theory, the author of this thesis makes a detailed description and analysis on what he proposes "stylistic markers" which fall into two categories with the first one being "form markers" and the second one "non-formal markers". Form markers have phonological markers, register markers, syntactic markers, lexical markers textual markers and markers of figures of speech; non-formal markers refer to those invisible images or psychological and sentimental factors including expression methods in a given work, the original work's inner qualities and Fusion of Visual Field of the receptor. When it comes to the methods of style translation, Mr. Liu puts forward Corresponding, Recasting and Decolouring. So far, lots of insightful and helpful criterion and principles have been put forward as for style translation among which Mr. Nida's dynamic equivalence is a useful one for it stresses "reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source-language message, first in terms of meaning, and secondly in terms of style"(Nida and Taber 1969:12). In the process of style translation, concrete translation methods should be applied under the guidance of some criterion or principles so as to perfect translation.The second half of this thesis contributes to the demonstration that Nida's dynamic equivalence can serve well as a guiding principle to style translation in Fu Sheng Liu Ji. In Chapter Four, various examples from two translated versions are cited and analyzed in a way to show how Mr. Lin and Mr. Black reproduce the original style in target language. With the comparisons and analysis made by the author of this paper, easier conclusion can be drawn that as far as the original style is concerned, Lin's translation is the closest natural equivalent one; and in a broad sense, if used properly and when combined with some concrete translation methods, dynamic equivalence can contribute a lot in the reproduction of the original style.