Fuzziness Of Numbers And Translation Methods From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence

The fundamental function of numbers is counting but sometimes they present a kind of fuzziness in literature and daily life. Chinese and English numbers exist in different cultural systems in which cultural conflict is quite common, so it is necessary to comply with certain principles and strategies in translation. With the development of Chinese cultural policy and increasing intercommunications between China and foreign countries, we need to transmit cultural information especially fuzzy numbers which are endowed with cultural connotation in an effective way. However, translation researches on fuzzy numbers are limited for the reason that it can’t convey cultural information fully and even lead to misunderstanding. With so many researches studied from the perspective of domestication and foreignization but seldom under the guidance of functional equivalence theory, it is an urgent problem to explore effective translating methods with it.The functional equivalence theory put forward by American famous translation theorist Eugene Nida has a great influence on translation fields in the whole world and is inspiring to achieve semantic equivalence in cross-cultural translation. It has been widely used in cross-cultural translation as the theoretical guidance therefore the author thinks it is significant to study translation of fuzzy numbers with cultural connotation. Besides the functional equivalence theory, this thesis analyzes fuzziness of numbers from the perspective of fuzzy linguistics and meanwhile it reveals cultural factors which deeply affect fuzzy numbers and an important role fuzzy numbers play in literature and daily life.This thesis collects a lot of fuzzy numbers, particularly numbers in the idioms and the poems as the corpus, and meanwhile analyzes the numbers imbued with cultural connotation. With the functional equivalence theory, this thesis adopts text analytic method, comparison method and the method of literature consultation to make comparative study on specific translation methods such as liberal translation, literal translation, literal translation with annotation, borrowing, omission and creative translation. It is pointed out that translators should choose proper methods in different cases if wanting to achieve functional equivalence.This thesis in the first chapter gives a brief introduction on the motivation, significance and structure. The second chapter introduces the development of fuzzy linguistic theories both at home and broad, then introduces universality of fuzziness in language foreshadowing the following fuzziness of numbers. Besides fuzzy linguistics, this thesis also introduces Nida’s functional equivalence theory which prepares theoretical foundation for the translation of fuzzy numbers. After introducing and analyzing theories, this thesis also studies fuzziness of numbers and its function, which implicates the necessity of its translation in the third chapter. The fourth chapter applies the functional equivalence theory to translate fuzzy numbers through so many examples to explore some specific translating methods, at the same time it is manifested that in certain cases these methods should be combined together to achieve functional equivalence.In general, numbers, imbued with fuzziness, are significant to cross-culture communication, and liberal translation, literal translation and other methods are of vital importance to translation of fuzzy numbers as well. Fuzzy linguistics develops late in China and is seldom used to analyze fuzzy numbers. Moreover, the functional equivalence theory transmits cultural information better, so this thesis which begins with fuzzy linguistics and explores translating methods with the guidance of functional equivalence is valuable and meaningful to study fuzzy numbers.