On Translation Of Biography From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

Biography,also known as bio,is a literary form that has the characteristics of authenticity,literariness,and contemporaneity.It is an important corpus of history,culture,language,and other fields that truly describe the typical characters of each era through artistic methods such as selection and editing.However,nowadays,translations and researches on biographies in China are still relatively few.Traditional translations that are faithful to original texts tend to focus only on the lexical level,ignoring the needs of pragmatics,stylistics,resulting in obscure translations.The emergence of a large number of elusive translations has damaged the accuracy and popularity of translations on biographies and hindered the effective transmission and exchange of Chinese culture.Besides,domestic research on translation of biographies,mainly focuses on the role of translators and the translation strategies of biographical literature,instead of being carried out under the systematic theoretical framework or forming a new set of translation strategies to guide other translations of biographies.Live Elegantly:Biography of Yang Jiang is written by Chinese writer Sonny in 2016,which mainly depicts the legendary life of the last talent in the Republic of China—Yang Jiang.As the Chinese female writer,literary translator,and foreign literature researcher as well as Qian Zhongshu's wife,Yang Jiang is proficient in English,French,and Spanish.She has created many books in her life and received high praise all over the world.The language in Live Elegantly:Biography of Yang Jiang is concise,beautiful and full of philosophy.When the book was first published in China,it was deeply sought after by readers,especially young readers.However,there is no English translation yet.Functional Equivalence Theory is to make the translation clear and coherent,achieving the aim that the readers of both source language and target language can respond in a similar way.The emergence of Functional Equivalence Theory has had a profound influence on the field of translation,providing a new perspective for translation studies and practice.The theoretical research on Functional Equivalence at home and abroad is so vast that it is mainly applied to non-literary fields such as political papers,film subtitles,and applied texts.However,little studies have been done on translation of biographies from the perspective of Functional Equivalence Theory.Therefore,this thesis conducts a deep study on translation of biographies on the basis of Functional Equivalence Theory.It takes the English translation of Live Elegantly:Biography of Yang Jiang as an example to explore the scientific and effective translation strategies in terms of vocabulary,syntax,context and style,hoping to be helpful tothe English translation of Chinese biographies.This thesis includes six chapters.Chapter One introduces the research background,research purposes and significance as well as the whole outline of the thesis.Chapter Two is a literature review of Functional Equivalence Theory and biography translation at home and abroad.Chapter Three combs the theoretical framework of this study,which covers the historical development,theoretical connotation and principles of Functional Equivalence Theory.Chapter Four analyzes the features and translation standards of biographies and the linguistic features of Live Elegantly:Biography of Yang Jiang.Chapter Five studies the translation strategies of biographies based on Functional Equivalence Theory from the aspects of vocabulary,syntax,context and style.Chapter Six draws the conclusion by listing the major findings,limitations and future studies.