Nida's Functional Equivalence And The Translation Of Political Writings

Nida's functional equivalence had exerted a long-lasting impact on the translation circle and his adaptation method had led translation theory to a higher stand. This thesis is to delve into the strong points and shortcomings of his theory. Also it attempts to set up translation standards of political writings under the guidance of his functional equivalence, especially the scientific part of the theory.This thesis consists of six parts. It makes a comprehensive introduction of Nida's functional equivalence, its definition, the comparison between functional equivalence and formal equivalence, the requirements of functional equivalence, and the criticism of the theory etc. Nida thinks that a translation should be the closest natural equivalence of the source language. Functional equivalence demands that the translator should look for equivalents in the target language in order to let the readers of the target text have the same response as the readers of the source text might do in the reading process. Then the author gives a detailed illustration of the criticism functional equivalence has received from the translation research circle. The criticisms can be summarized as: functional equivalence is the translation theory of the Bible, not general translation theory; functional equivalence neglects the difference that lies in language and culture; functional equivalence is cultural deception, not cultural communication. In order to be more objective of functional equivalence, it presents a comparison of alienation(foreignization) and adaptation(or domestication) on the basis of the analysis of the two versions of translated《红楼梦》and the practice of translation of political writings. It can be seen clearly that the two translation strategies are both valid when they are utilized to translate works with special stylistic features. They are compatible and complementary to each other. On certain occasions, it is more advisable to use the adaptation strategy because it is able to convey more accurately the nuances of source text. The thesis also depicts the present state of the translation of political writings in China, followed by an explanation of its stylistic features.On the basis of the scientific part of Nida's translation theory of functional equivalence, given the stylistic features of political writings, the thesis makes a tentative research into the translation strategy of political writings. The author thinks that political writings should be rendered in line with lexical accuracy, syntactic naturalness, semantic faithfulness and political sensitiveness.The translation of political writings is an important type of translation. But the past translations theories all focus on the translation of the literary works and neglect the theoretical guidance of the translation of political writings. As a result, the translation of political writings lacks in theoretical guidance. The author thinks that due attention should be paid to the translation theory of political writings. This thesis is to present some ideas or standards on the translation of political writings by combining contemporary western translation theory and political writings.