Translation Of Proof Of Heaven From The Perspective Of Equivalence Theory

In the twenty-first century, as the cultural exchanges between China and foreigncountries are increasing, the translation publishing industry has been flourished. Thisprovides readers with mental enjoyment. Among them the biography literature showsits prospect. Eben Alexander’s autobiographical book—Proof of Heaven had been onthe The New York Times best seller list for several weeks and arose much attention inthe world. With the key chapters of this novel as research sample, two main problemsneed to be raised in the rendering process: one is cross-cultural issues especially inidioms and religious items; the other is textual structure, particularly somecomplicated sentences. With regard to these questions, this report mainly focuses onhow to deal with them.In light of Eugene A. Nida’s theory “functional equivalence” as well as M.A.K.Halliday’s theme-rheme theory introduced in his Systemic Functional Grammar, thisthesis presents a criticism on the translation of Alexander’s Proof of Heaven and triesto prove the applicability of these theories to translate this novel. Under the guidanceof “functional equivalence”, some translation problems especially involved withcultural factors have been solved. While the theme-rheme analysis can have greatimpact on the translation process for that the translator can grasp the core meaning ofthe source text, fully understand the author’s intention and create a coherentdiscourse.Through the study, it is found that the functional equivalence has a guidingsignificance in the practice of rendering cross-cultural factors. Moreover, taking thetheme-rheme as a unit to analyze structures and transfer is proved to be feasible andexpand the translation field in its theory.