A Comparative Study On Two Chinese Versions Of The Great Gatsby From The Theoretical Angle Of Nida’s Functional Equivalence

Fitzgerald is well-known as "Poet Laureate of the Jazz Age" of the 20th century. He became famous because of his novel This Side of Paradise. However, the Great Gatsby he published in 1925 laid his great reputation in American literature history. The language of the Great Gatsby is precise, smooth and fluent and the structure is concise and well-knit. The novel is greatly welcomed by Chinese readers, translators and writers. The Chinese versions of the Great Gatsby are numerous, but George Kao’s and Wu Ningkun’s translations are the most eminent and typical ones. They own special features respectively, but they both are deep loved by readers and scholars.Based on linguistic point of view, and combining with his rich translation experiences, Eugene Nida, an American well-known translator and distinguish linguist, comes up with functional equivalent theory. This theory, in 1980s, was brought into China. It leaded to great repercussions. The functional equivalent theory is a scientific translation theory. It is a little different from domestic "faithful, expressive and elegant translation", as well as "vivid" translation ideas. But they can realize the same effect. This theory emphasizes functional equivalent effect between the translation versions and the source texts. The translation versions need to reproduce the source texts with the most natural equivalent expressions of target language in the aspects of lexical choice, grammatical structure, semantic factor, discourse level and cultural context. This theory pays attention to the reader’s responses. It needs the readers of translation versions response or reflect the same as the source texts readers response and reflect. Functional equivalent theory opens up a new world of translation theory.By using Nida’s functional equivalent theory, the author of this article analyzes the two representative translation versions by George Kao and Wu Ningkun. The objective of the contrast is not to decide which translation edition is better, but to analyze how the equivalent effect is realized in these two Chinese versions. Then it will further affirm the significance of equivalent theory in literary translation. At the same time, this article will also give practical and useful suggestions about how to create high-quality equivalent translation writings in term of these two editions’ style and advantages.There are five chapters in the text part. The first chapter majorly elaborates on the research’s purpose, significance, methods and the overall structure of the paper. The second part is literature review, which is majorly analyzing the researches of the Great Gatsby’s and its two Chinese versions. The third part is the framework of this theory. This section majorly introduces Nida and his functional equivalent translation theory, as well as its principles. In this part, the author will also discuss the theory and its studies. The fourth part is the comparative study of the Great Gatsby’s two Chinese versions. It is the main part of this article. From five points of lexical choice, grammatical structure, syntactical factor, discourse level and cultural context, the author gives lots of examples to illustrate in which aspect the two translators realize functional equivalent effect, and how they realize. The fifth part is the conclusion part of the thesis and it also points out the deficiency of this research and the suggestions for the future researches.