An Analysis Of Neologism Translation From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

The booming English neologisms have been gaining their weight in English language since the World War Ⅱ. Meanwhile, the fast development of social economy, culture, science and technology and other elements provides endless power for neologism researches. With the introduction of new things and concepts, neologism increasingly gets its place in target culture. Many linguists pay their attention to this growing force, hence, outcome numerous studies of English new words.As a new species in language, neologism is featured in certain formations and is in endless change according to different circumstances. New words created under different cultural backgrounds embody profound cultural charm. With the cross-cultural exchange deepened, people are in great need to know the new expressions for better mutual understanding. This requires the translator to reproduce the original flavor and provoke the same feeling among readers in target language as those in source language.Guided by functional equivalence theory, together with the analysis of formation features of English neologism, this paper is to summarize different approaches in English neologism translation and how they are proved to be efficient for the purpose of natural equivalence during translation process. The four approaches summed up in this thesis are:literal translation, analogous translation, transliteration and bilingual translation.This paper mainly consists of5chapters.The first chapter gives a general introduction of this research, including research background and question, and the structure of the paper; chapter two gives an overall study of English neologism, including previous studies on English neologism abroad and at home; while in part three, the author discussed further about the interrelationship between functional equivalence theory and English neologism translation, and the role played by cultural context in realizing functional equivalence, laying a foundation of introducing translation methods in part four, in which the author summarized4main translation methods the translators usually utilize from the perspective of equivalent principle, from which people could get better ideas when doing translation work. The last part is conclusion, the author pointed out the main contribution and limitation of the research, meanwhile, the author emphasized again the importance of translating on the basis of FET and within the cultural context.