A Study On The Allusion Translation In The Merchant Of Venice From The Functional Equivalence Theory

English allusions occupy a very important position in the English language and literature. They are extremely rich, involving scriptures, myths, legends, fables, folklores, historical events as well as literary classics. With the characteristics of succinctness, profundity and expressiveness, they are very popular and used widely in a variety of genres. Allusions are rooted in a particular culture and contain rich cultural connotations with subtle euphemisms, and thus in the interpretation of cross-cultural discourse allusion translation has always been a very difficult problem. In addition, there are differences in geography, history, religion, custom, language and culture between China and western countries. As a result, allusion translation has always been a challenge. How to retain the original literary image and maintain its cultural flavor as much as possible when conveying its rich cultural connotations with equivalent effect in the translation of English allusions and thus to make target language readers easily understand, are to us the problem to study.William Shakespeare is not only the greatest poet and dramatist during English Renaissance period, but also a talented English language master. His plays represent the pinnacle of human drama art and for centuries have been translated into various languages and widely disseminated in the world. The Merchant of Venice is one of his greatest plays which have enjoyed great popularity in China with various well-known Chinese versions by famous translators, including Zhu Shenghao, Liang Shiqiu. Shakespeare makes use of abundant allusions of diverse origins which lend the drama great literary charm but at the same time add to difficulties in the literature translation and cultural diffusion.The American scholar Eugene.A.Nida put forward the reader-oriented "dynamic equivalence" theory in his monograph Toward a Science of Translation in1964and later he further developed "functional equivalence" as a substitute, in which he pointed out that the relation of the target text readers to the target text should be substantially the same to that of the source text readers to the source text. The paper is intended to explore the principle and strategies of the equivalent translation of the English allusions under the guidance of Nida’s functional equivalence theory. The author firstly presents a brief review of Nida’s functional equivalence theory, pointing out the features, factors, criteria of equivalent translation, and then discusses the definition, forms, types, and functions of the allusions which have particular connotations and implications in the source language and culture. The core of the thesis is to explain in detail the governing principle and strategies of allusion translation through comparative analysis of the allusion translation in The Merchant of Venice. We draw the following conclusion:to achieve equivalence in allusion translation, a translator should give priority to the TL readers’acceptability and seek to arouse the same responses as that from SL readers to convey fully the metaphorical meaning of the allusion as well as its unique cultural flavor by means of flexible strategies of literal translation and liberal translation.