The Application Of Nida's Principle Of Dynamic Equivalence In Bible Translation

It is no doubt that the Bible is one of the most influential works in the world. It is a great literature with a long history. As early as thousands of years ago did translators begin to translate the Bible. The work of Bible translation prevailed particularly in the recent centuries. Today, the Bible has been translated into over 2000 languages in the world with numerous versions. All of these versions were translated guided by two major approaches: formal equivalence translation and dynamic equivalence translation.At present, with the development of languages as well and the social changes, more and more Bible readers hope that a kind of modern Bible translation can be published. American linguist, translation theorist Eugene Albert Nida 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/Todays English Version was published in 1976. This version soon became popular with a lot of people 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 addition, the author, in order to get the first-hand data of the reader's evaluation of and responses to different Bible versions, composes a questionnaire, through the results of which finds out the features of each version, and knows the actual needs of the Bible readers.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.