A Practical Report On The English-Chinese Translation Of The Log Of A Cowboy Under Nida's Functional Equivalence Theory

The Log of a Cowboy was written by Andy Adams and published in 1903.This masterpiece tells what he had been through in his cowboy life and depicts a detailed panorama of the long journey of cattle drive.The authenticity of this novel makes it a representative western novel and elevates Adams into an eminent writer among so many cowboy novelists in America.Considering the distinction and reality in this work,the translator believes that this novel well deserves the effort of translation.The excerpt from chapter one to chapter three in this book is translated in accordance with Eugene Nida's functional equivalence theory.The translator hopes that this practice can further prove the effective guidance of functional equivalence theory in the translation of fiction.This novel is characterized by enriched characters,distinct cultural characteristics and frequent use of rhetorical sentences.When translating novel text,one should pay attention to the accuracy of words and expressions to ensure accurate transmission of meaning,describe the language style appropriately and transit the chapters in a natural manner.All these efforts will enable the target readers perceive the story and the charm of the source language.In view of translation principles of novel and the characteristics of this novel,the translator refers to Eugene Nida's functional equivalence theory to guide this translation practice.Nida's functional equivalence theory focuses on “reader response” stemmed from reproducing the original text in the most appropriate and natural way.To accomplish content and style equivalence between the source language and the target language,Nida proposed four principles,including lexical equivalence,syntactic equivalence,textual equivalence,stylistic equivalence,so as to maximize equivalence in the passage.Under the guidance of this theory,the translator makes effort to ensure the effective equivalence between the target language and the source language via practical translation and experience summarization.It combines literal translation,free translation and other translation methods so that the readers can perceive the feeling of the original text accurately.