Nida's "Reader's Equivalent Responses" And Its Limitations In Cultural Translation

Dr. Eugene A. Nida is one of the famous representatives of the western translation theory school of linguistics, and over the fifty years of his study in his translation theory and practice, he has achieved great success in this field. Nida's translation theories, first introduced into China in the 1980's, have been the earlier and much more introduced among the modern western theories and have exerted the greatest influence in the circles of Chinese translation studies. His principal contributions include: (1) he has introduced information theory and semiotics into translation theories and created the translation principle of "dynamic equivalence" and later "functional equivalence"; (2) he has applied the latest achievements in the modern linguistics into his translation theories and (3) he is the first in the translation history of the world to consider "Reader's Equivalent Responses" as the highest translation standard. Especially, his principles of "dynamic equivalence" and "Reader's Equivalent Responses" have completely changed the situation of the static analysis of the Chinese traditional translation theories and helped the Chinese translators to find a new way to establish an open-style translation theory. The core of Nida's translation theories is his "functional equivalence", which evolved from his practice in the translation of The Bible. While introducing the reception theory into his research, he regards, as the highest translation standard to achieve, whether "the readers of a translated text should be able to understand and appreciate it essentially in the same manner as the original readers did" (Nida, 1999:118). However, translation is not only an activity between languages. It is essentially an activity between cultures. From the viewpoint of the culture, it is a worthy question for discussion whether Nida's "Reader's Equivalent Responses" can be considered as the highest translation standard.On the basis of the analysis of the cultural backgrounds and the theoretical essence of "Reader's Equivalent Responses", this thesis then makes a tentative endeavor to dissect the relationships among language, culture and translation. Due to the actual existence of conflicts between the different cultures and the reader's responses, we show that Nida's theory of "Reader's Equivalent Responses" has its limitations: as an obvious theory for the translation of The Bible, it can not be usedas a general theory for the translation of different literary cultures. This thesis further proposes some strategies for the cultural translation practice in order to better promote the international cultural communications.The thesis consists of six chapters.Chapter One gives a brief introduction to Dr. Eugene A. Nida and his translation theories as well as a general analysis of his "Reader's Equivalent Responses", aiming at a presentation of the significance and the objective of the author's present study and an outline of each of its chapters.In the Second Chapter, the thesis strives to achieve a careful analysis of Nida's "Reader's Equivalent Responses". It points out that the theoretical foundation of Nida's "Reader's Equivalent Responses" lies in his application of the modern linguistics in his translation practice. The main cultural source of his theories stems from the western social cultures and religious cultures, among which the Biblical culture has the deepest influence on Nida, his translation practice and theories.The theoretical essence of his "Reader's Equivalent Responses" is that a translated text can be considered to have met the highest translation standard only when the responses or manners in understanding by the translated text readers are the same as the ones by the source text readers. The translation of such a nature is a pure language activity and it is his principle for directing the translation of The Bible because this translation stresses only the contents of the language, not the form. Nevertheless, cultural translation not only emphasizes the translation of the contents,...