A Translation Project Report Of The Theory And Practice Of Translation (Chapter Two)

This is a translation project report on the second chapter entitled “The Nature ofTranslating” from The Theory and Practice of Translation, a masterpiece ontranslation theories and practices by Eugene A. Nida and Charles Russel Taber. Thisbook is a close combination of theories and practices of translation, containing awealth of examples contributed by different English versions of the Bible and makingcareful comparison-contrast analyses. Therefore, it stands out from its kind as a bookof authority, equipped with its strong ability to convince. More importantly, Nidaintroduced in the book a novel principle of translation called “dynamic equivalence”,which had a great impact on translation studies, and which is fully justified as amilestone. Chapter two,“The Nature of Translating”, dedicates much space toillustrate the advantage of dynamic equivalence over formal correspondence bycomparing examples excerpted from several versions of the Bible. This new principleof translation is generally considered to be guidance on literary translation. Thisreport consists mainly of four parts. The first part gives a brief introduction to thebackground information of the project. The second part includes an introduction to theoriginal text and the writer, as well as an evaluation of the text. The third part beginswith the definition of functional equivalence and proceeds to deal with the difficultiesand the techniques used in translating the text, guided by knowledge on distinctionsbetween the features of the two languages. The fourth part is a summary that looks atgains and lessons drawn from this project.