A Comparative Study Of Three English Versions Of Sakya Gnomic Verses-from The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

Ethnic literature is an important part of Chinese multi-cultures and has a unique and irreplaceable position. Tibetan gnomic verses as a miniature of the Tibetan society are one of the precious heritages of the Tibetan cultural treasure. Gnomic verse is an important kind of Tibetan literature. It is called “Le Xie” in Tibetan, meaning “good words”, mainly to promote the philosophy of life. Tibetan gnomic verse usually uses four lines as a stanza in the writing, two lines as for metaphor and two lines for reality. It takes the natural phenomena of the daily life, the folk stories and proverbs as the medium and uses metaphor and reasoning techniques to describe the religion, ethics and the practice method of the social life, and to solve people’s confusion. Sakya Gnomic Verses, one of the famous representatives of Tibetan gnomic verses, its translation and spread have profound significance to enhance the cultural soft power of our country.Under the guidance of the functional equivalence theory, this thesis comparatively analyzes three English versions from three aspects, namely, the lexical equivalence, the passage equivalence and the style equivalence. The three English versions consist of Tibetan Buddhist Tarthang Tulku’s version A Precious Treasury of Elegant Sayings(1977), John T. Davenport’s version Ordinary Wisdom: Sakya Pandita’s Treasury of Good Advice(2000) and Li Zhengshuan’s version Tibetan Gnomic Verses Translated into English(2013). Nida’s functional equivalence theory requires the translated works to be the closest to the original text and the target readers achieve the same reading effect as the original readers. This thesis strives to find out the most faithful translation to the original text through comparison and analysis of the three versions, so as to promote the uniqueness of national culture and spread the authentic Tibetan culture to foreign readers.This thesis falls into three parts, including the introduction, the body and the conclusion. Introduction mainly introduces Sakya Gnomic Verses, three English versions of Sakya Gnomic Verses, Nida’s functional equivalence theory and current researches on the three English versions. The body consists of three chapters. Chapter One compares and analyzes the three versions from four aspects of lexical equivalence. According to the possible scenario that may arise during the translation process, the equivalence translation at word level is divided into four types, including complete equivalence, one word with multiple equivalents, words with one equivalent, and words without equivalents. It compares the advantages and disadvantages of the translations by analyzing examples. Chapter Two studies the three versions from passage equivalence. Context plays an important role in the understanding of the discourse. Through the study of the original text, this thesis only studies linguistic context and cultural context. It examines the translator’s understanding of the original text and familiarities of the source culture. Chapter Three studies the three versions from the elements influencing style equivalence. These factors mainly include: translator’s purpose, translation strategies and translation skills. Because of different purposes three translators employed different translation strategies in dealing with cultural differences and used different translation skills on the relationship between form and content at language level. And these differences make different versions of the same work present a variety of styles. Through the analysis of examples, this chapter focuses on translation strategies and translation skills employed by the three translators. Conclusion summarizes the main contents of this thesis, restates the main points and reflects on the shortcomings of the thesis.