A Study On The English Translation Of Guanzhong Cultural Information In Ruined City From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence

The importance of Chinese cultural exportation is rising increasingly with the development of global economy and the frequency of intercultural communication,which brings out the emphasis on the translation of cultural information in Chinese literary works.Howard Goldblatt is considered as an important promoter of Chinese culture in Western world,and his latest translated work Ruined City is an important representation of Shaanxi local writer Jia Pingwa.Taking Xijing,the capital of Shaanxi province as the background,the book has described the linguistic features,customs and ways of life in Guanzhong area,which covers Xi'an,Baoji,Tongchuan,and Weinan.Considering the ample examples of cultural information in this book,the English version of Ruined City provides an invaluable sample with regard to the study of cultural information translation.Nida's Functional Equivalence advocates the equivalence between the original text and the target text instead of the rigid correspondence between languages on the surface,which includes the equivalence in terms of the superficial lexical information as well as the deep cultural connotation.Based on Nida's Functional Equivalence,this thesis explores the translation strategies and principles adopted by Goldblatt in the translation of Ruined City from the perspectives of translating material cultural information,social cultural information,linguistic cultural information and spiritual cultural information,by employing several research methods including literature research,comparative analysis study and case study.The author concludes that the translator Goldbaltt adopts the translation strategies include literal translation,liberal translation,and the combination of literal translation and liberal translation to reach the equivalence between the target language and the source language in the respect of semantic meaning and cultural connotation in the process of translation.In this regard,Nida's Functional Equivalence provides significant instruction for cultural information translation in terms of the adoption of translation principle and strategy.