The Application Of Nida’s Functional Equivalence In Literary Translation For Children

Through the Looking-glass and What Alice Found There, one of Lewis Carroll’s most distinguished works, has soon enjoyed great popularity in the whole world since it was published in 1871. This thesis focuses on examining the feasibility and superiority of Functional Equivalence theory in evaluating the translations of the novel by carefully studying its three Chinese translated texts rendered by Wang Yongnian, Zhao Yuanren, and Wu Juntao respectively. This paper is based on a detailed review of recent literature and text analysis method to carry out a careful analysis and comparison of some valuable translation phenomenon from three respects, namely, equivalence in meaning, in style, and in cultural points.On the basis of a detailed evaluation, we can conclude that even though three versions all have their own merits and drawbacks, in most cases, Zhao Yuanren’s rendition overshadows the other two by achieving functional equivalence to the largest extent. Finding also has it that the application of Functional Equivalence in the analysis sheds some light on Children’s literature translation studies. To be specifically, in translating Children’s literature, translators are suggested to choose the text or book he or she possesses keen interests in before translating, to apprehend fully the meaning and the stylistic features of the text while translating and to have the translation polished by reading it out loud after finished the rendering. Besides, this dissertation also calls for more studies on children’s literature under the guidance of the Functional Equivalence.