A Study Of The Chinese Version Of Villages From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence

John Updike,a well-known American novelist,poet,and critic,is famous for his unique writing style and a total of 61 works of diverse genres,many of which are translated into Chinese.Villages,published in 2004,was finished as a novel in Updike's senior years.The story,set in America from 1930s to the beginning of the 21^stcentury,focuses on the life of a middle-class man Owen and thereby reflects how the moral values of contemporary American middle class changed during that time.Up to now,there is only one Chinese version with Zhang Bing as the translator.The sole Chinese translation was published by the People's Literature Publishing House in 2011,which is chosen as the research objective.This thesis is intended to make a study on the Chinese translation of Villages from the perspective of Nida's Functional Equivalence Theory.In consideration of the wide use of long sentences with complex syntactic structure,beautiful diction,elegant writing style and rich historical and cultural messages as prominent features of Villages,the translator thus faces the challenge of understanding the complicated meanings,and delivering high aesthetic value and cultural factors of the work.In this connection,this thesis will analyze Zhang Bing's Chinese translation from the aspects of meaning,aesthetics and culture.By presenting representative examples,it will probe into the issue of equivalence on the disparities between English and Chinese,and judge whether Zhang Bing's Chinese translation meets the criteria of functional equivalence.