On Self-translation And Conventional Translation From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence

Although self-translating almost co-occurs with translating, self-translation studies are far less than translation studies. Nevertheless, self-translation studies abroad have begun to take shape since the 1960's. In comparison, self-translation studies at home are relatively less, despite that there is no lack of outstanding national self-translators. So far self-translation study is only limited to self-translation itself, and rare studies concerning the contrast and comparison between self-translation and conventional translation'from a specific perspective. Therefore, the author attempts to analyze the dissimilarities between self-translation and conventional translation.This paper, based on the case study of the translated versions of Pai Hsien-yung's Taipei People, attempts to compare and contrast self-translation and conventional translation from the perspective of Eugene A. Nida's Functional Equivalence theory. Since self-translation is the author's own translation of his works, retrospection substitutes analysis in self-translation process. Generally speaking, the self-translator makes every effort to introduce every aspect of his works, for literature is concerned, he is trying to achieve the functional equivalence in terms of meaning, style and culture. While the conventional translator attempts to convey to the reader the author's content, themes and writing style by analyzing the original; the conventional translator, during the analysis and comprehension, racks his brains to grasp the author's intention through analyzing the language and style level, but as Chinese language is characterized by ambiguity and fuzziness(only Chinese-English translation is discussed here), in the Chinese-English translation comprehension process, there is a more or less discrepancy between the understood text and the original text or it is infused with the translator's points of view or ideas, making it impossible to achieve the desired functional equivalence. This thesis mainly deals with novel translation, a type of literary translation. Self-translation and conventional translation of a novel could be compared and contrasted from the aspects of the theme, content, style, etc. This paper attempts to conduct comparison and contrast between self-translation and conventional translation from the level of meaning, style, culture.This thesis aims at comparing self-translation and conventional translation from the perspective of functional equivalence, hence drawing a conclusion that Taipei People's self-translation can achieve greater degree of functional equivalence than conventional translation can. The significance of this thesis lies in that more and more people will be engaged in self-translation and carry on self-translation studies.