A Case Study Of The Two Versions Of The Bible From The Perspective Of Dynamic Equivalence

There is no doubt that the Bible is one of the most influential works in the world. It is a great literary work with a history of thousands of years.It contains abundant content and occupies an enormous cultural and historical impact on the western world. A great concern should be taken by all who study English.As early as thousands of years ago translators began to translate the Bible. The work of Bible translation has prevailed particularly in the recent centuries. Today, the Bible has been translated into numerous versions all over the world. All of these versions were translated main under the guidance of formal equivalence theory and dynamic equivalence theory.At present, with the development of languages as well as the social changes, more and more Bible readers hope that a kind of modern Bible translation can be published. Eugene Albert Nida, an American linguist and translation theorist made a great contribution to the Bible translation. In the 1960's, he proposed a translation principle called "Dynamic Equivalence" and guided his Bible translation work in the American Bible Society. A new version—Good News Bible/Today's English version was published in 1976. This version soon became popular in America, Britain and many other places in the world by its "clear, simple and natural languages". Nida's translation theory also exerted a tremendous influence on translation study, which opened a new dimension to Bible translation.This paper is to study the application of Nida's dynamic equivalence principle in the Bible translation through the comparison and analyses of two Bible versions—King James Version and Good News Bible, then prove this application is valid and effective. In order to decide whether we should adopt or discard Nida's Principle of dynamic equivalence, it is of great necessity to study it systematically at great length. The author of this thesis attempts to view this principle dialectically and comprehensively so that we can draw on the essence of it while discarding its deficiencies.The thesis consists of six parts. In Chapter One the author gives a general introduction to the Bible and its translation history. Then is the literature review in and abroad. In Chapter Three, the author analyzes the dynamic equivalence systematically. In Chapter Four the author made practical comparison between two versions of Bible. The last part sums up the practical use of Nida's Theory of dynamic equivalence in Bible translation.Finally, the author also proposes some limitations of the application, and tries to provide some possible suggestions of improvement. With the maturity of the translation theories, we have every reason to believe that more powerful Bible versions will appear in the future.