The Application Of Functional Equivalence Theory To Sociological Translation

Understanding Dying, Death, and Bereavement is a sociological book co-authored by two American sociologists. It mainly talks about how to understand and cope with the social aspects of dying, death and bereavement. Generally speaking, the book is comprehensive and covers wide range of topics in thanatology, which is a branch of sociology. This book has great value in academic researches and practical implications. Death issues are more "in" today, especially in the context of highly publicized and all-too-frequent school shootings and terrorist attacks in various parts of the world. Chinese people are also more open to end-of-life issues nowadays. Under such circumstances, the author accepted the task of translating Understanding Dying, Death, and Bereavement.During translation process, the author found that absolute equivalence in content and form is not applicable to sociological translation. After summarizing the characteristics of sociological literature and problems met in sociological translation, the author figured out that the evaluation criteria of translation should be whether target readers could obtain equivalent message as source-text readers do. To offer further support for this finding, the author referred to the functional equivalence theory of Nida.Several translation strategies are adopted by the author to realize functional equivalence of words, sentences and cultures in different languages. Generally speaking, literal translation strategy can be applied to translating pure sociological words. As for semi-sociological words, translators should figure out their professional meanings with the help of terminological dictionary. English terms without corresponding Chinese expressions are big barriers in sociological translation, which call for translators’ subjective initiatives to create new expressions according to word-building theory. The are two basic steps in translating complex and passive sentences:working out logical relationship between the meaning units and making proper changes to them. The equivalence of cultures is the hardest to realize because of the great differences between different ethnic groups. A qualified translator should read widely, accumulate cultural knowledge and improve writing skills, and only in this way can he or she fully expresses the cultural connotation in source language to target readers.The report includes four chapters. The first chapter includes a brief introduction to Understanding Dying, Death, and Bereavement and task description. The second chapter includes characteristics of sociological literature, problems in sociological translation process and the necessity for Nida’s functional equivalence theory. The third chapter analyzes several cases in the book from the perspectives of word equivalence, sentence equivalence and culture equivalence under the guidance of functional equivalence theory. The final chapter summarizes major findings.