A Study On The Translation Of Vanity Fair From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

Vanity Fair is the representative work of a British writer,William Makepeace Thackeray in the nineteenth century.At present,there are more than 20 versions of translation in China.Since Yang Bi's translation was first published by People's Literature Publishing House in 1957,it has been highly appreciated both by Chinese literary translation critics and readers.It is found that Yang Bi's translation focuses on dealing with the relationship between the target readers and the text,which coincides with the principle of the Functional Equivalence Theory.In the 1960 s,Eugene Nida put forward the Functional Equivalence Theory,which is a landmark in the history of translation theory and practice.Nida holds that equivalence is not only limited to the lexical and grammatical transformation between the source language and the target language,but also pays attention to the comprehension and effect of the target readers,which ultimately makes the response of the target readers and the target readers alike to the work,and this is the ideal translation.In order to achieve the ideal translation,translators are required to find the most appropriate and natural equivalence to the source language.This provides translators with important translation ideas.Therefore,from the perspective of Functional Equivalence Theory,this paper explores how equivalence is achieved in Yang Bi's translation.From the perspective of Functional Equivalence Theory,this paper makes an in-depth analysis of Yang Bi's translation at the lexical,syntactical,textual and rhetorical levels.At the lexical level,according to Nida's classification of parts of speech,translation studies are carried out from seven categories: entities,activities,states,characteristics,processes,links and deictics;at the syntactical level,translation studies are carried out from seven categories of core sentences and sentence transformation according to Nida's classification of sentences;at the textual level,according to Nida's division of texts,it studies from appropriate reorganization and merging of the original text paragraphs;at the rhetorical level,according to Nida's classification of rhetoric translation,this paper studies the transformation of rhetoric and non-rhetoric.The analysis shows that the translated version can express the original meaning more clearly,and the translation achieves different degrees of equivalence in the above four levels.Through the analysis and study of Yang Bi's translation,the following two findings could be found: firstly,when translating,the translator chooses words with the same effect but with different forms,splits and merges sentences,combines paragraphs appropriately and converts rhetoric into non-rhetoric;secondly,the translator adopts different translation methods to achieve functional equivalence from four levels:(1)lexical level: free translation is the main translation method used by the translator.Meanwhile,translation techniques such as specification,combination,omission,addition,and substitution are used to achieve functional equivalence;(2)syntactical level: imitation translation is the main translation method adopted by the translator.Meanwhile,translation techniques such as diversion,addition,and conversion are used to achieve functional equivalence;(3)textual level: literal translation is the main translation method adopted by the translator.Meanwhile,translation techniques such as combination and omission are adopted to achieve functional equivalence;(4)rhetorical level: free translation and variation translation are the main translation methods used by the translator.Meanwhile,translation techniques such as addition and omission are used to achieve functional equivalence.These translation methods and techniques are adopted to make the translation meets the needs of the target language readers and achieves functional equivalence.