Translation Of Modern Chinese Prose-from The Perspective Of Nida's Functional Equivalence Theory

Modern Chinese prose refers to the prose that was written in Chinese after the May Fourth Movement. The topics are usually about human, society and nature. In Chinese literature, it is one important literary genre along with poetry, novel and drama, so it can not be ignored. The unique features of the prose are the least-restricted writing form and the sincerest emotional expression. Modern Chinese prose is a great treasure in the Chinese literature, which highly expresses the characteristic spirit of that time, so the translation should be excellent enough to introduce the thoughts of the authors to the target language readers.Nida's functional equivalence theory is a world famous theory in translation, which highlights the function of the language and the response of the readers. In other words, the function of the language in source language texts should be translated equivalently in the target language texts, and the readers of the target language should have the same response as the readers of the source language. Any translations adjusted to this requirement can be said to be successful translations according to Nida's functional equivalence theory.The translation of novel, drama, practical writing and many other literary genres have already adopted this theory as their guidance, while few translators have employed it to study the translation of modern Chinese prose. The writer of this paper combines Nida's functional equivalence theory with English versions of some well-known modern Chinese prose to study. The writer analyses the language in the English versions to see if they are pure English and the most equivalence to the original, because Nida's functional equivalent theory aims at seeking"the closest natural equivalence". The function of the language and response of the readers are also in the range of the writer's analysis. The writer discusses if the function can be translated equivalently, and whether the responses of both languages readers are equivalent or not. After comparative analysis of the translated prose, the writer draws the conclusion that Nida's functional equivalence theory can be a suitable translation theory for modern Chinese prose translation. In order to get the closest natural equivalence, the writer of this paper brings forward some practical translation methods and skills for translators, such as literal translation, free/semantic translation; adding, substitution etc. to achieve functional equivalence in translation. The innovation of this paper is the study of modern Chinese prose translation under Nida's functional equivalence theory. The writer of this paper also poses some theoretical and practical suggestions for the translation of modern Chinese prose.This paper is made up of five parts.Chapter One is the introduction, which presents the purpose of the study, the significance of the study and the overall structure of the paper. Chapter Two, the literature review begins with a brief introduction of the prose, which includes definition, classification and characteristics of the prose. Then the writer introduces the functional equivalence theory and the previous studies on prose translation and functional equivalence. Chapter Three is the theoretical framework. Chapter Four, which makes a comparative analysis of English versions of some well-known modern Chinese prose under the guidance of Nida's functional equivalence theory, is the main body of this thesis. In this chapter, the writer also suggested some practical translation methods and skills to achieve functional equivalence in translating modern Chinese prose. Chapter Five draws a conclusion on the basis of the study above. It sums up the major findings and contributions of this study and the limitations and suggestions for further studies as well.