Character Depiction Translation In Little Women: An Approach Based On Functional Equivalence Theory

Since Nida,an American linguist and translator,put forward Functional Equivalence Theory in 1960 s,the concept of “equivalence” in translation has far-reaching impact at home and abroad,which made translation theory perfect and diversified.The theory was introduced into China in the early of 1980 s,and began to change the difficult situation of the use of literal translation or free translation.Nida advocates the objective response of readers is a measure for the translated versions.The Functional Equivalence Theory,based on the equivalence of style and meaning,emphasizes the similar response between the target reader to the translated version and the original reader to the original text,which greatly influences scholars in China.Little Women is a saga of four sisters' growing up in a New England town during the Civil War.It plays an important role in the American literary world.The author has a brilliant talent in character depiction,catching person's personality,action and speech to express the unique mental activity and to incisively reveal the theme of the novel.Scholars have conducted a lot of studies from different perspectives,but few people have made a study on Little Women from the perspective of Functional Equivalence Theory.This research aims to study the transference of character depiction in Little Women to the two Chinese versions from the perspective of functional equivalence.It also analyzes the four sisters' portrait depiction,speech depiction,action depiction and mental depiction,to find the differences of the two versions.It is found that Zhang Hongyi and Ye Yu(version 1)prefer the literal translation more or less when translating the typical character depiction,and reserve the form of the original text,making it possible for the target readers to accept the culture of the original language.However,Liu Chunying and Chen Yuli(version 2)prefer employing free translation and amplification,using the four-word idioms to translate the portrait depiction of the typical character,which conforms to Chinese language style.Thus,version 2 achieves the optimal equivalence.It is concluded that no matter what translation method is employed in transferring character depiction in the source text,the translator is supposed to set it as an ultimate goal to achieve the optimal equivalence in the target text.