A Comparative Study On Back Translation Of Mainland Version And Taiwan Version Of The Joy Luck Club From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence

In recent years,China is becoming increasingly stronger and getting more and more attention from all over the world,which reflects in literature field is that Chinese American literature starts to flourish aboard and at home.However,the translation works of Chinese American literature are not satisfying.The lack of good translations limits the research of Chinese American literature in China.On the other hand,with the emergence of more and more new translation theories in recent years,Nida's Functional Equivalence theory has been ignored and even questioned.The aim of the back translation of Chinese American literature is that the target receptor's response to the Hybridity and Chinese Culture-Specific Items in the same way as the readers of the original text,which is in accord with Nida's Functional Equivalence Theory.From the perspective of Eugene Nida's Functional Equivalence Theory,this paper makes a comparative analysis of the two translation versions of The Joy Luck Club translated by Cheng Naishan and Yu Renrui,exploring the reason for the popularity of The Joy Luck Club.As an important representative work of Chinese American literature,In this thesis,the writer explores the main language features and cultural characteristics of the original of The Joy Luck Club,as well as the way the two versions of the translation dealing with back translation,in order to research how to reproduce the hybrid of Chinese and western characteristics in the back translation of Chinese American literature making the target receptor's response substantially the same as that of the receptor of the original language.The writer firstly analyzes the characteristics of the original of The Joy Luck Club,which can be divided into linguistic characteristics and cultural characteristics respectively discussing Broken Chinese English and Chinese Culture-Specific Items.And then from the perspective of Nida's Functional Equivalence theory,respectively from the lexical level and the cultural level,the writer discusses how to achieve functional equivalence for both translation versions,and make the target receptor's response substantially the same as that of the receptor of the original language.Finally,through case analysis,the differences and similarities of translation strategies adopted by the two versions in the back translation of the same sentence are analyzed,and the conclusion is that the translation methods of literal translation,free translation,and annotation are adopted in both versions variously,but some translation strategies such as shift of perspective is missing in both translation versions.The author expects this thesis of the comparative study of the two translation versions of Tan's The Joy Luck Club could be of some enlightening significance to the translation of Chinese American literary works,and serve as a starting point for the research on the translation of Chinese American literature as well as the improvement of the translation status of Chinese American literature in China.