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Analysis Of The Two Cultural Translations Of Vanity Fair Based On Functional Equivalence Theory

Posted on:2011-03-14Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:Z H SunFull Text:PDF
GTID:2155360332955698Subject:Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
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By the end of 1960s American Bible translator Eugene A. Nida has proposed the well-known translation theory"Dynamic Equivalence", which has an overwhelming significance in the development of translation theories and practice. Nida claims that a scientific translation of the Bible might arouse an impact among various readers; even though they share different cultural backgrounds. Then he carries out a series of researches concerning cultural translation and believes that translation can be functional only in aspects of content rather than forms. What he has done gives rise to the renaming of his previous theory from"Dynamic equivalence"to"Functional equivalence". To some extent, it bears great resemblance to the following Bassnet's Cultural Turns in Translation Studies, i.e. Translation research has passed the stage of formalism, initiatively taking a wide issue of context, history and tradition into account. Both are aware of the decisive role of meaning translation rather than forms in translation practical work.In terms of its essence and methods, Nida is deeply influenced by American structurist Chomsky and his TG grammar. However, somewhat different from Chomsky's mode, Nida studies and analyzes the surface-to-deep structure from a bilingual system, and figures out how to achieve the functional equivalence. For example, translators can use recreating, paraphrasing, cultural footnoting and transliterating strategies.Because of the cultural discrepancy among readers, the cultural meaning equivalence is more required in content translation than in its form translation. The notion"equivalence"in this period is not confined to the correspondence alone in lexicon and grammar between source and target languages; instead, the functional equivalence theory begins to focus on the proper rendering of content, target language readers'response and its similarity with the source language receivers. According to Chomsky's TG grammar, also called transformational generative grammar, sentences in one language can be divided into two layers: one is the deep structure, and the other is the surface structure. The deep structure is the kernel sentence of the surface expression after various transformations. Distinguishing from Chomsky, Nida studies and analyzes the structure from a bilingual system, and find out how to achieve the functional equivalence. For example, translators can use various ways, for instance, recreating, paraphrasing, cultural footnoting and transliterating. According to his theory, the functional equivalence can be understood in two ways: the first as selecting from the target language in terms of the closest natural equivalence from source language with the same access for target language readers. And the second way as the equivalence can not be comprehended in its mathematical meaning of identity, but only in terms of proximity, i.e. on the degrees of closeness to functional identity.This thesis chooses the classic English novel Vanity Fair which is famous for its profound and unique English culture in the 19th century and then divides the culture translation into three parts: namely, material culture translation, system culture translation and psychology culture translation and comes to its detail in order to compare the cultural translation in two Chinese versions, illustrating the possibility and applicability of functional equivalence in literary work and how to reach the closest natural equivalence in the text with cultural implications.
Keywords/Search Tags:functional equivalence, material culture, system culture, psychological culture
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