A Report On Translating Love For Lydia(Excerpt) Under The Guidance Of Functional Equivalence Theory

The source text of this translation report is excerpted from Love for Lydia,,a love story written by H.E.Bates,a well-known British novelist.Reflecting the conflict between sweet romance and painful reality in the love experience of young people,the novel is featured with exciting plots,distinctive characters and varied language.Taking it as translation material will improve the translator’s literary translation ability.This translation practice is greatly influenced by the theory of functional equivalence proposed by Eugene A.Nida,an American translator and theorist.Contrary to formal equivalence,functional equivalence does not seek formal similarity between the source and target text,but the most appropriate and natural equivalence in the target language to the message or content of the source text.This report introduces the translation process,including selection of the translation material,preparations before translation,translating and proofreading,case analysis and reflections under the guidance of the functional equivalence theory.Focusing on character descriptions in the novel,the author of this report analyzes and evaluates her translation methods and effects from three aspects-lexicon,syntax and text.It is found that functional equivalence at the lexical level can be achieved effectively through substitution and paraphrasing,at the syntactic level through division and re-adjustment of word order,and at the textual level through retaining the thematic structure and cohesive devices.