A Practice Report On The Translation Of English Passive Sentences In Digests From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

As one of the most influential magazines published in America,Reader's Digest has a wide range of topics in the fresh and concise mastery of language,and keeps up with the times.It is a good material for understanding and learning about American politics,economy and culture.The use of the passive voice in English is very frequent,and in Reader's Digest there are a large number of passive sentences in Reader's digest,which are difficult to translate faithfully,expressively and elegantly.Therefore,the purpose of this thesis is to complete the translation of passive sentences under the guidance of functional equivalence theory.The practice report takes the articles from Issue 3 to Issue 7 in American Reader 's Digest in 2017 for translation materials.In the process of translation,it is found that there are differences in the use of the English and Chinese passive sentences.Therefore,the author has a strong interest in the translation of passive sentences.So the passive sentences are selected from each article,and under the guidance of functional equivalence theory,the author adopts appropriate translation methods to translate these sentences and makes a full analysis of these cases.First,If the original form can be retained and the original meaning can be expressed correctly,the translator literally translates the English passive sentence into the Chinese passive sentence with bei(“?”)or a sentence with passive meaning without bei(“?”).Second,if the original form can't be expressed correctly,the translator translates it into active sentence in Chinese by adjusting the order of sentence.And third,the translator translates the passive voice of English into non-subject Chinese sentences,which are more concise and conform to the style of the article.In this practice report,the following conclusions are drawn:First of all,abstract magazines cover a wide range of contents and have a variety of stylistic styles,then Translation methods should be used flexibly.Second,there are great differences in the use of the English and Chinese passive sentences,which need to overcome cultural and thinking differences and be flexibly translated into different sentence patterns in Chinese.Thirdly,the translation of abstract magazines requires translators to have high comprehensive quality.Fourth,English and Chinese belong to two different language families,it cannot be syntactically corresponding which needs to be recreated in the process of translation if necessary.Last but not least,behind any language is the inheritance and accumulation of culture.Only with a deep understanding of the cultural connotation behind an article can we better translate it and achieve functional equivalence.