A Comparative Study Of The Two English Versions Of The Thirty-Six Strategies From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

The Thirty-Six Strategies has a long cultural heritage in China, it summarizes our ancient outstanding military thoughts and rich experience from the war. Its content is extensive and profound; the thought is deep, words are concise, catchy, and pass on from generation to generation. Accurate English translation of the Thirty-Six Strategies has the very vital significance in spreading the Chinese traditional culture. So far, the Thirty-Six Strategies has two complete English versions, one is translated by Sun Haichen and published by the Beijing foreign language press in2009, the other one is translated by Stefan H. Verstappen and published by China books and periodicals, Inc. San Francisco in1999published for the first time,2004published for a second time. This thesis sets up the first study on the English version of The Thirty-Six Strategies, which aims to be helpful to the following studies on the translation of The Thirty-Six Strategies.How to define the criteria of translation has always been a central topic in the translation for a long time. Domestic and foreign theorists have proposed many standards to evaluate different translated texts. Among them, Nida’s Functional Equivalence Theory is by far an effect theory in the translation circle in China and gets lots of attention from Chinese scholars. Functional Equivalence Theory advocates natural, closest translation of the original text. Functional Equivalence Theory pays attention to the readers and tries to make the target readers feel the same to the source text in great extent as the source language reader do. The translated texts need to generate a reaction of the readers of the target language as similar as possible as source language reader’s response to the source text. The English version of The Thirty-Six Strategies should enable the target language readers to get the response about the profound military thoughts, concise language and vivid rhetoric methods.This thesis applies Nida’s Functional Equivalence Theory as the theorical basis to evaluate the two English versions. The comparative study lies on the level of meaning, style and culture transmission of the two English versions, which is aim to figure out a better version. On the meaning level, the comparative study separates into the comparation of the translation of designative meaning and associative meaning. On the style level, the comparative study is made on the rhetoric devices and four-character phrase. Those rhetorical devices are further discussed on metaphor, repetition and personification. On the aspect of culture transmission is discussed on the translation of culture-loaded words. By making the comparative study of the two English versions on those aspects by case study and analysing these cases in details, the author finds out that both versions take the formal equivalent as much as possible to the source text. Sun Haichen’s version is oriented to the source language. Most of the case, he adopts the literal translation in both content and form. According to Nida’s Function Equivalence Theory, no matter in means of literal translation or free translation, most important thing is to get the target readers’response upon the target text close to the sourse language readers’ response upon the sourse text. However, the words and images in Sun Haichen’s version are not acceptable well among the English readers. Stefan H.Verstappen’s version adopts flexible translation methods, and tends to the expression of associative meaning. The expressions of his version are natural and rhetorical. Therefore, the English readers can gain a better understanding from Stefan H.Verstappen’s version in aspects of meaning, style and culture transmission. Based on Nida’s Functional Equivalence Theory, the equivalent degree of Stefan’s version is higher.