A Comparative Study On The Translation Of Rhetorical Devices In The Analects Of Confucius From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence

Functional Equivalence is one of the most important translation theories of Eugene A. Nida,a well-known American translation theorist and linguist. Functional Equivalence came into existence in the 1960’s and introduced to China in the 1980’s. It is well-known that Functional Equivalence Theory is different from previous translation theories, which lay stress on the correspondence between the source language and the target language and study the translation from the aspect of language transformation. The theory emphasizes the functional equivalence and focuses on reader’s response, that is, the readers of a translated text should be able to understand and appreciate it in essentially the same manner as the original readers did.Functional Equivalence provides a new angle of view for translation criticism in terms of a dynamic dimension and accordingly, it creates a profound influence on the academic field of translation home and abroad.The Analects of Confucius, as a great classic and instructive record of Confucius and his disciples and the most influential representative work of Chinese civilization, has played a significant part in human development as well as in the cultural exchange in the world. With the development of cultural exchange among countries and the increasing influence of Chinese culture in the world, the scholars are paying more and more attention to the relevant studies on The Analects of Confucius, therefore further pushing forward its development. In recent years,lots of scholars have made deep research on this classic from various perspectives. In the meantime, in translation fields, more and more scholars have also joined in this wave and got great achievements.Scholars have given dozens of definitions of the rhetoric. The definitions are all different except for one point that the aim of the rhetoric is to beautify the speech and polish the language.There are many kinds of rhetorical devices in The Analects of Confucius, the writer divides them into three kinds: semantic rhetorical devices, including simile, metaphor, metonymy and so on;phonetic rhetorical devices, like onomatopoeia; syntactic rhetorical devices, including contrast,repetition, parallelism and so on.This thesis intends to conduct a comparative study on the translation of the rhetorical devices in The Analects of Confucius from the perspective of Nida’s Functional Equivalence.Firstly, the thesis will give a brief introduction of Eugene Nida’s Functional Equivalence, and then previous studies on rhetorical devices in The Analects of Confucius. Secondly, the thesis will make an analysis of the features of the rhetorical devices in The Analects of Confucius, and finally it will make a comparative study on the translation of the rhetorical devices from the perspective of Nida’s Functional Equivalence and make an objective assessment on theadvantages and differences of the rhetorical translation in different versions, thus making some contributions to the related translation to some degree.