A Comparative Study Of Translation Methods Of Rhetorical Devices In Great Expectations From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence

Charles Dickens was one of the most famous novelists in British literature and many scholars have made research on Charles Dickens and his works. Charles Dickens was also one of the earliest English writers introduced into China and the study of Charles Dickens and his works in China begun in 1907. His Great Expectations is thought to be the most successful by him and other literary critics.Dozens of papers on it have been published in China. However, most of them focus on the narrative techniques, characteristics of characters and language features in the novel and only a few mention the rhetorical devices and their translation methods.This paper studies the translation methods of the rhetorical devices in the two Chinese versions of Great Expectations from Nida's functional equivalence.Functional equivalence was put forward by Eugene A. Nida after his study of the Bible translation for years. The key concept of functional equivalence is target reader's response. The concept shifts its focus from the original text to the target readers. The rhetorical devices are one of the main language features in Great Expectations. These rhetorical devices enable Charles Dickens to bring the characters,the scenes, etc. to life. In translating the novel, translators need to think about how to make the target readers respond to the translated rhetorical devices as the way the original readers respond to the original rhetorical devices. In this thesis, the author chooses Wang Keyi's and Zhu Wan's versions, the most popular Chinese versions in China. Based on functional equivalence, the paper intends to find out whether functional equivalence theory can guide translators in translating the rhetorical devices, what the differences and similarities are between English and Chinese rhetorical devices and what kind of translation methods is preferred in translating the rhetorical devices in the novel.In the thesis, the author makes a comparative study of the translation methods of the main rhetorical devices—hyperboles, similes metaphors and repetitions in the two Chinese versions of Great Expectations. Through the study, the author concludes that functional equivalence theory can guide translators in translating rhetorical devices since the translation theory stresses that the response of the target readers to the targettext should be as much the same as the response of original readers to the original text.The author also finds out that similes and metaphors in English differ much from those in Chinese when culture is involved while hyperboles and repetitions in both languages are largely the same. Therefore, the translation of similes and metaphors is much more difficult than that of hyperboles and repetitions. Moreover, the author discovers that literal translation, free translation, substitution and compensation are commonly used translation methods in translating rhetorical devices. But annotation is preferred when there is a cultural vacancy in the target language.