A Translation Report Of The Invention Of Wings (Part One) From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

This is a translation report. The translation project was selected from the first part of The Invention of Wings, which was a feminist novel written by the contemporary American female writer Sue Monk Kidd. The novel told the story about the complex relationship between Miss Sarah and her maid Hetty, who lived in the South of the United States in early nineteenth century. Facing the social standards and secular perspectives, they finished a difficult transformation during the baptism of time. This report focused on the translation of this novel guided by Nida’s functional equivalence theory.During the translation, the translator tried to use the target language to reproduce the equivalence on the content, style, feelings and beauty of source text, which is similar to the functional equivalence theory. Therefore, using the functional equivalence theory, the author tired to convey the original content, ideas, emotion and style, and make the target sentences to be read as smoothly as the source text, and help the target readers get the same feelings as the source readers. During the translation practice, the author came across many difficulties, which can be roughly divided into three categories:(1) the translation of people’s names and titles; (2) the translation of simple sentences with implications; (3) the translation of personalities in different expressions. To solve these problems, under the guidance of the functional equivalence theory, the author used different translation methods. Because of the differences between Chinese and English on language and culture, many words or sentences cannot be translated into target language directly. Thus, the author used the amplification and recasting method in translation in order to achieve equivalence on content. Without changing the source information, the author added words, phrases and even sentences so that translated the indistinct source information into specific target language by using the amplification. Based on the understanding of the source text, the author recast sentences to make the target language readable and smooth, according to rules of expression in target language. Meanwhile, translation in original order helped to reproduce the original author’s writing style, so that the content and form of target text can be equivalent to the source text. The author hoped that this report could provide some useful experience.