On Application Of Functional Equivalence Theory To Financial Translation

Although China’s financial industry gets started later than that of western countries, it develops at an exceedingly fast speed, and is being integrated into international financial industry. As an up-rising star, China’s financial industry boasts a bright prospect for the development, and transnational cooperation and communication frequently happen. All these greatly spur the production of financial translation. In recent years, there are indeed a large number of translators, scholars, and even many translation companies engaging into financial translation, including the translation of documents, books or essays in finance. Their efforts have made great contributions to transnational cooperation and communication in finance. However, it is worth mentioning that the quality of financial translation is not satisfactory. Financial translation is an applied job and demanding to translators, which requires the translator to be proficient in language, be familiar to the differences between cultures, and also have commanding of knowledge in finance. In fact, it is not easy to achieve these points. Undoubtedly, a lot of difficulties have occurred to financial translation, and even there have mistranslations, impossible translations or dead translations.The thesis attempts to study the application of Nida’s functional equivalence into financial translation. Like no other time before, the thesis is to apply functional equivalence to an applied discipline, and discuss its application into financial translation and its feasibility through analyzing its equivalence in meaning and style. In the transition of two messages, apart from meaning and style, we must be aware of such factors as difference between cultures, loyalty of the translation to the original and response of the readers.The thesis discussed the equivalence in meaning and style respectively at lexical, syntactic, and discourse level. Chapter one reviews the theory of functional equivalence and its application to literary translation. Chapter two illustrates the features of financial language in lexicon, syntax and discourse. Chapter three presents challenges in translating financial English to Chinese and vice versa and the feasibility of applying functional equivalence to financial translation. Chapter four studies the equivalence in meaning and style of financial translation at lexical, syntactic and discourse level. Equivalence in cultural connotation and response of the readers is also studied in this chapter. Abundant examples cited from financial translation manifest that Nida’s functional equivalence theory can also be applied into financial translation by achieving equivalence in meaning and style so as to realize the ultimate goal of financial translation-----serving for cooperation and communication.