On The Translation Of Essays From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

Literary translation, as an artistic form, is to render the artistic image and style with the close and natural expression in the target language(TL) and convey the same aesthetic features for the TL readers. Essay is a sub-genre of literature, so the translation of essay should make the TL readers feel the artistic conception and the charm of the style. According to Nida’s functional equivalence theory, translation is not only a conversion of information, a kind of culture and the exchange of ideas, it can also enable the TL readers to have the same reaction when they appreciate the original. This theory is widely used in essay translation. This translation project focuses on four personal essays, which are the source texts selected from Personal Essays in English: Reading and Writing and translated into Chinese. The purpose of this report is to provide a summary of the features of the source texts, to explain translation problems encountered during the practice and applicable solutions thereto. The source texts are analyzed from the lexical, syntactic, textual levels based on Nida’s functional equivalence theory. Moreover, the translation principles, strategies and skills employed in the project are summarized and discussed in this report, with a view to contribute to future translation practice concerning the same or similar text types.The report is divided into four parts. The first part touches upon the task description, including the background of the translation project, the introduction to the source texts, the significance of the task and the process description. The second part is the literature review, presenting the study of translation of essays in China and introducing the functional equivalence theory. The third part analyzes the features of the source texts from the lexical, syntactic and textual levels, and describes and expounds on actual translation through a case study in detail, with specific translation strategies and skills for each key area discussed and explained through examples. The last part presents a summary of the report, introducing what the author has found and learned, and what remains to be improved in future study.