A Study On The Translation Skills Of Rhetorical Devices Adopted In Dent Young’s The Marshes Of Mount Liang From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

Nida (1969) defines “translating” as “Translating consists in reproducing in the receptorlanguage(RL) the closest natural equivalent of the source language (SL) message, first interms of meaning and secondly in terms of style.”And he puts forward the theory of“functional equivalence”. In conclusion,“functional equivalence” demands the receptorlanguage be infinitely close to the source language from the function. Practical experience hasshowed that there is no absolutely equivalent translation, no equivalence with the sourcearticle both in content and form, and that RL is just relatively close to the meaning of SL.Shuihuzhuan (《水�'传》) is one of the four Chinese classics, with four English versionscurrently issued in the world, among which Dent Young’s version of The Marshes of MountLiang has exerted a great influence to some extent, with the same effect between the targettext readers’ response to the target text and the source text readers’ response to the originaltext.Based on Eugene Nida’s functional equivalence theory, this thesis, taking Dent Young’sThe Marshes of Mount Liang as an example, makes an analysis of the translation skills of sixrhetorical devices commonly used in this novel, namely, comparison, antithesis, hyperbole,allusion, pun and parallelism. This thesis advocates that within the permitted scope ofspecification in the target language, the translator should, on the one hand, reproduce thespecific rhetorical devices applied in the original as much as possible, with the purpose ofretaining the original style as much as possible; while on the other hand, the translator shouldnot translate the rhetorical devices literally and mechanically, which will destroy thereadability of the translated version, instead the translator should translate them flexibly underthe guidance of functional equivalence theory.