On Stylistic Equivalence Of Getting Personal (Excerpt) Translation From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

Philip Lopate,an academician of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,is a famous contemporary essay writer.Praised as “American Montaigne” by the media,he has achieved many awards,such as John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.The source text of this translation report is Getting Personal,which is a personal essay collection.This collection,created by Philip Lopate's reflection on life,describes dilemma of modern urban intellectuals' life with humorous style.Style is the core of personal essay.If the style of the source text fails to be reproduced,reading experience of the target readers will definitely be compromised.Guided by Nida's Functional Equivalence Theory,this report explores how to transfer demotic,direct,humorous and witty style of the source text into the target text to achieve the stylistic equivalence.Although style is a relatively abstract concept,the translator,inspired by the classification of Liu Miqing's Stylistic Marker Theory,classifies and reifies the style in the source text,and chooses “syntactic marker” and “marker of figure of speech” as research object of this translation report.When dealing with “syntactic marker”,the translator adopts five translation techniques,namely,amplification,omission,conversion,division and reconstruction to ensure that the translation conforms to Chinese readers' thinking mode and expression habits,and that demotic and direct style can be reproduced in the target text.On the level of “marker of figure of speech”,the translator analyzes four figures of speech including simile,metaphor,personification and hyperbole.Under the premise of smooth and fluent translation,literal translation and free translation are employed to translate figures of speech in order to transfer humorous and witty style of the source text to the target text.