The Influence Of The Translation's Purpose On Equivalence

With China's development and opening up, China plays an increasingly important role in the world. More people want to know China, not only her culture and history, but also her present political, economic and technological development. On another hand, the Chinese people also want to know the outside world very much. Therefore, translation, both of C-E (Chinese-English) and E-C (English-Chinese) become one important medium for foreigners and Chinese to know each other and exchange bilateral cultures. Many translators have made great contributions in this regard. But as far as we can see, our translation works still leave much to be desired. The study of these underlying difficulties becomes quite necessary and important. This paper, as a tentative study of exploring effective methods for translation on the basis of the functional equivalence theory and Skopos theory, is expected to be conducive to the translation work as a whole. Since each language has its distinctive features, and every nation has its own culture, it is natural that we should not adopt translation theory separately and unilaterally.It is the primary purpose of this paper to evaluate two remarkable translation theories: functional equivalence theory and Skopos theory, from the aspects of their merits and limitations. In this paper, the author will not make the judgments on which one is better, but intend to make a relatively detailed analysis of the translation theories of functional equivalence theory and Skopos theory and try to integrate these two translation theories somewhere in order to give a more concrete and specific construction to translation practice.Dr Nida's theory of Functional Equivalence has been highly valued and has influenced the practice of translation in general. 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.The major contributions of Nida's functional equivalence to translation theory can be found in his insightful study of translation based on an extensive range of theories, including Chomsky's transformation-generative grammar, information and communication theory, and also socialinguistics and socialsemiotics. Different from other text-based equivalence theory, Nida's functional equivalence distinguishes itself by shifting its focus of attention to the relationship between text and reader and by regarding reader's response as the criterion of translation. Nida's theory of functional equivalence provides a completely new criterion for the evaluation of translated works, which shifts from the focus of message to that of the response of the receptor. The closest natural equivalent translation is the translation that can evoke from its readers the same response as the source text does from its readers. In this paper, the theory of functional equivalence serves as basic elements in translation process.Functional translation theory raised by Katharina Reiss, Hans Vermeer and Holz Manttari, the theory uphold that translating is both an interlingual action and an intercultural action. Besides carefully studying those factors at linguistic level, we must study factors at extra-linguistic level, that is, cultural factors which are closely related to languages.Functional translation theory stressed that as one action of human being's, translation has its particular purpose. So the purposefulness, communicativeness and interculturalness of translational actions or events are the first issue to considerate. The functionalist theory believes that the Skopos rule determines the translation strategies employed in a specific translation in order to produce a functionally adequate target text and fully carry out the purpose of a translation. Within the framework of the theory, equivalence, an aged yardstick of a translation, is replaced by adequacy. Guided mainly by this new assessment criterion, the translator can turn to lots of flexible translation skills to fulfill his purpose. Compared with the traditional linguistic approaches, functional approaches to translating appear to be more dynamic. In the latter part of this thesis, the author analyzes translations from different sources to prove how functional translation theory works in serving translating purposes, accomplishing the task of communication and giving prominence to cultural communication. In this paper, the author stresses the same way to Skopos theory as to Functional Equivalence, treats the Skopos theory as the vital instruction in translation process.With all due respected, the author views the Skopos theory from other ways. It is not only the purpose made by translator, but also the purpose of source text, which called the purpose of original author. In this paper, author believes that these two kinds of purposes play the equal role in translation process. The detailed analysis will be found in chapter four.Besides introduction and conclusion, this thesis is divided into four chapters.The first is the introduction.Chapter 1 deals with the literature review. It begins with pointing out the different definition of Equivalence, which Nida's functional equivalence is highly stressed. It also gives some brief introduction of Functionalist translation approach, mainly focusing on Skopos theory.Chapter 2 focuses on the questions of translation, from historic perspective to discuss the possibility of translatability. The main intention of this chapter is to pave the way for further discussion.Chapter 3 deals with comparison between Functional Equivalence and Skopos theory. The whole analysis procedures involve two parts: merits and limitations of both theories. Based on such an analysis, we can have a clear view on these two theories and lay down the keynote for further analysis.In Chapter 4, the author tries to put forward a new method: equivalence under the guidance of Skopos. To achieve the Skopos of original author, translator and readers, Equivalence has to concern the triple. Only on this condition, could we say a successful translation been made.The last part is a conclusion to summarize the major findings of the research and points out the residual issues of the present research as well as some suggestions for the future study.