A Comparative Study Of The Two Chinese Versions Of Moment In Peking

Moment in Peking is regarded as the most influential one among Lin Yutang's works. Written in English, this novel has introduced the great Chinese culture to the world.This thesis aims to make a comparative study of the two Chinese versions of Moment in Peking in the light of Nida's functional equivalence theory, mainly semantic equivalence and stylistic equivalence. The comparison of the two Chinese versions in terms of meaning is made from five perspectives: conceptual meaning, collocative meaning, connotative meaning, affective meaning and grammatical meaning; the comparison in terms of style is made from two perspectives: style of narrative language and style of conversational language.On the basis of the comparative study, a conclusion is drawn: literary translation is composed of analysis, transfer and restructuring. In the process of translating, to attain the equivalence of meaning, translators should analyze the linguistic item, grammatical construction and collocational pattern of the source and the target languages carefully. To attain the equivalence of style, some factors such as the author's intention, the temporal, the regional and the social backgrounds of the works and the characters' languages should be taken into consideration.