A Study Of Liu Bingshan’s Chinese Version Of Saint Joan From The Perspective Of Nida’s Functional Equivalence

Despite different comments on Nida’s equivalence theory in translation circles at homeand abroad, its contributions to translation studies can not be ignored. During the previousstage of translation studies, Nida’s equivalence theory, more exactly, functional equivalenceis regarded as a criterion of translation works. However, whether functional equivalence canbe used to guide and evaluate literary translation often arouses heated debate.Based on Nida’s functional equivalence, by comparing Liu Bingshan’s Chinese versionand Shen Huihui’s Chinese version of Saint Joan, this thesis tries to testify whetherfunctional equivalence theory can be used as a criterion for drama translation? Besides, thisthesis will analyze Liu’s Chinese version of Saint Joan on three levels by the means ofcombining a macroscopic view with a microscopic view, trying to testify whether Liu’sChinese version of Saint Joan has achieved equivalence on three different levels.This thesis is composed of four chapters. Chapter one is the introduction, including theresearch aims, the research questions, the feasibility and the structure of the thesis. Chaptertwo is a literature review of drama translation and equivalence theory and an overview ofNida’s functional equivalence as well as a discussion of its guidance in drama translation.Besides, it also briefly introduces the content and characteristics of Saint Joan, the originalauthor George Bernard Shaw’s writing skills and the translator Liu Bingshan. Chapter three isthe main body of this thesis and a case study of Liu Bingshan’s Chinese version of Saint Joanfrom the perspective of Nida’s functional equivalence. By comparing Liu Bingshan’s Chineseversion and Shen Huihui’s Chinese version of Saint Joan, the thesis tries to analyze whetherthe original text and the translation text of Saint Joan have achieved functional equivalenceon three different levels, i.e., language level, discourse level and cultural level. Chapter fouris the conclusion part. The author of the thesis draws a conclusion that functional equivalencetheory can be used as a guidance and criterion for drama translation which is feasible andmeaningful and that Liu’s Chinese version of Saint Joan not only has achieved equivalenceon language level, discourse level and cultural level respectively but also has preserved themeaning and style of the original text. Meanwhile, this chapter also refers to the limitation ofthe thesis and the study direction in the future.