A Comparative Study Of Three Versions Of The Holy Bible From The Perspective Of Functional Euivalence

As the canonical scriptures of both Judism and Christianity, the Bible has exerted anunestimatable influence on the western even the world culture for over two thousands years.Besides its universally applicable teachings, its influence is also greatly indebted to thosebiblical translators and missionaries in history, who continuously brought the Bible to peoplewith various cultures who speak all sorts of tongus and with all kinds of social and politicalstatues. Thus the study of biblical translation seems to have carried more profound impact inhistory than other literature translation studies.Since the Nestorian Stele in Tang Dynasty, Bible translation into Chinese has a history ofover a thousand years, during which Bible has also embedded its influence in the passage oftime. With the developing process of globalization, Chinese people have a growingunderstanding of the western culture, and an increasing number of the Chinese read the Bibleout of various reasons. However, the most accepted Chinese version is still the Chinese UnionVersion, which was published at the beginning of the last century in the transition period oftraditional Chinese and modern Chinese. Many terms in this version have been outdated andforgotten nowadays, which causes a sense of distance in the readers. It becomes more andmore evident that the need of more readable Chinese scriptures is growing urgent.In the mid of last century, American Biblicist and linguist Eugene Albert Nida pubilisheda Bible-oriented a dynamic equivalence translating theory, which librarted the translators fromthe dilemma between word-or-word or sense-for-sense translation and advocated the readerresponse equivalence, which is to say, the translation should cause same effects in the targetlanguage readers as the original text causes in the sourse languge readers. It resceived greatsuccess immediately after its publication and new versions of Bible into different languges isorganized translated and published. There was even a “Nida Fever” in the Chinese linguisticand translating fields and the theory influenced more than just Bible translation. TodaysChinese Version was such a translation translated in the guidance of Nida’s theory. And thisthesis will focus on discussing the effectiveness of the version.First of all, the significance of Bible and the translation history in both China and theworld will be introduced. Then explaination of the translating background and guidingprinciples to the Bible versions concerned in this thesis will be given respectively, which arethe Chinese Union Version, King James Version and the Todays Chinese Version. Henth, theauthor gives a brief introduction to Eugene Nida and his dynamic equivalence theory and itsinfluence. Then, the author compares the bible versions and discusss the feasibility of thetheory. In order to give a systimetical analysis of the comparation, the author chooses thetransitional book of the New and Old Testaments and the first Gospel, the Gospel of St.Matthew as the sample of study. At last, the author summerises the advantages and disadvantages of Nida’s theory and gives her views on how the Chinese readers can bettergrab the meaning of the Bible. The author also analyses the limitations and future research ofthe study.As the translation theories develop, the author hopes that better Chinese Bible versionwill be on the market and this study can serve as a reference to the future biblical tranlators.