Equivalence Of Diversity--A Survey Of Major Modern American Translation Theories

This thesis intends to give a relatively detailed analysis of the translation theories of five renowned modern American translation scholars: Ezra Pound, Eugene Nida, Roman Jakobson, Andre Lefevere, and Lawrence Venuti with the purpose of facilitating relevant studies in China.As a poet, Pound treated translation as creation. Though he knew no Chinese, he translated a volume of Chinese poems of the Tang Dynasty and the works of Confucius with some other scholar's English notes. Early translators of the American Translation Workshops followed Pound's theory of creative translation.Nida's theoretical framework is much more complex and more complete. This thesis mainly focuses on his "functional equivalence" theory. According to Nida, the best translation should be one that can evoke the same response from the target receptor as the original text does from the original receptor.Jakobson's theory was best illustrated by his essay On Linguistic Aspects of Translation. He divided translation into three types: intralingual translation, interlingual translation, and intersemiotic translation. Like Nida, Jakobson also stressed the importance of SL and TL readers' same response.Lefevere studied translation from a macro perspective of society and culture, noting that translation would usually be influenced by three factors of ideology, poetics and patronage. Lefevere also believed that the translator should cater to the expectations of the target reader.Venuti's translation theory intends to counter the traditional target text-oriented translation, which in his view is a demonstration of ethnocentrism of Western countries. He holds that the translated version should retain the culture of the source text, which sometimes would lead to awkward wording in the translation.