The Application Of Functional Equivalence In English And Chinese Cross-cultural Translation

The ways of thinking, beliefs, attitudes and values of different cultures not only produce failures and misunderstandings in cross-cultural communication, but also pose headaches to translation theorists and translators who are trying to produce the "ideal" target texts. In both translation theory and practice, what is important is to break the cultural barriers and convey the source cultural message faithfully and effectively. The theory of functional equivalence put forward by the well-known American linguist and translation theorist Eugene Nida is very revealing on the respect of thorough understanding of the source text and achieving semantic equivalence across cultures. It can be stated in terms of a comparison of the way in which the original receptors understood and appreciated the original text and the way in which receptors of the translated text understand and appreciate the translated text. According to this theory, translators should be able to produce the most approximate, not identical response between the source language and target language readers. Because of cultural differences, identical response is an ideal which translators are striving for.This paper first introduces Nida's functional equivalence theory and its great contributions and impact on Chinese translation studies. Afterwards, it also shows the important trend in contemporary translation studies-culture translation. Translation has been viewed as "cross-cultural communication". That's why this paper is intended to study functional equivalence from cultural perspective.In the main part, the paper deals with how functional equivalence theory is applied in cross-cultural translation practice by citing various E-C and C-E examples. Different methods are used to seek equivalence at word level and above word level. When it comes to the equivalence above word level, the translation of idioms and fixed expressions, customs and habits and euphemism are chosen to illustrate how to achieve the closest natural equivalence.Functional equivalence theory proves to be very instructive and effective in cross-cultural translation. However, it is through the cross-cultural translation practice that thelimitations of this theory are revealed. It .needs further development and enrichment toprovide guidance for translation practice.