A Study Of The English Version Of The Scholars From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence

Among those translation evaluation criteria, the American translation theoristEugene A. Nida’s functional equivalence theory is considered as one of the mostinstructive translation standards. This theory emphasizes a reproduction of theoriginal language with the closest natural receptor language, and the same response ofthe target readers should reach maximum extent with the response of the originalreaders. This thesis takes the joint translation of The Scholars by the Yangs as theobject of the study, combined with Nida’s functional equivalence theory, to explorethe realization of the functional equivalence and the translation strategies in theirtranslation text.The Scholars is a full-length Zhanghui novel written by the novelist Wu Jingzi ofthe Qing dynasty, which is a masterpiece of the ancient Chinese satirical literature. Itis a pity that until now the joint translation version of Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang isthe only complete English version. We are also aware that although more and moreresearches have been done on the translation of Chinese classic literary works, notenough attention has been paid to the translation of The Scholars compared with ADream of Red Mansions and some other Chinese classic literary works. In theprevious studies on the English version of The Scholars, researches on the translationof cultural-loaded words occupy the major part. And the analyses are mainly from theperspectives of foreignization and domestication, faithfulness, cultural default andcompensation and so on. Analyses from the perspective of functional equivalencetheory are scarcely seen. And the realization of the features of Zhanghui novel in TheScholars is seldom discussed. Therefore, the author hopes to fill some gap in theexisting researches.This thesis consists of six chapters. The first chapter is an introduction whichpresents a brief introduction of the research background of the study, the aims andsignificance of the study and the entire structure of the thesis. The second chapter is aliterature review of the material of the case study, including the introduction of Wu Jingzi and The Scholars, studies at home and abroad on The Scholars, the Englishversion of The Scholars and a brief introduction to the Yangs. The third chapter is anintroduction of the theoretical framework of Nida’s functional equivalence theory. Theforth chapter is the research methodology, which states the data collection and theresearch methods of the analysis. The fifth chapter is a study of the translation text ofThe Scholars, which is the key part of the thesis. The author analyzes from threeaspects: the translation of address terms, the realization of the features of Zhanghuinovel and the translation of culture-loaded words and expressions. Plenty of examplesare given to analyze whether the translated text accurately and fully conveys the sameamount of information as the source text does; whether the Yangs reproduce theZhanghui style of The Scholars; and whether the cultural information could beaccepted by the target readers as the original readers do. The last chapter is theconclusion of this thesis, which summarizes the major findings and limitations.According to the research, it can be found that the English version of The Scholarsroughly achieves the functional equivalence and achieves the equivalence of responsebetween the source language readers and the target language readers.