Formal Equivalence And Functional Equivalence In Translation

Translation plays a necessary part in cross-cultural communication. To accurately express the source information, translators should try to achieve the equivalence between source language and target language. However, scholars both in foreign countries and in China hold different opinions about how to achieve equivalence. These endless disputes are still going on. Thus, there is a need to further explain how to correctly understand the concept of equivalence, especially discuss the relationship between equivalence in forms and equivalence in functions.The first part is to introduce the representative concepts and ideas of equivalence theory put forward by foreign and domestic scholars.The second part is to make a comparison and analysis among these concepts, and thus put forward the understanding of equivalence theory in my own opinion.The third part is the concrete example analysis. The writer put this equivalence theory into practice by analyzing Chinese translation of the American novel " White Wales", and then come up with the idea of how to achieve concrete translation, that is, to effectively combine equivalence in forms and equivalence in meanings, and achieve a modest range of equivalence.The fourth part is the concrete explanation of the strategy—a combination of form equivalence and functional equivalence, and elaborates on the choice and the balance of these approaches.The fifth part is a whole summary of the essay.