A Report On The Chinese-English Translation Of The Commentary Of Amazing,My China From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

This report is a translation practice of the commentary of the documentary movie Amazing,My China.As a foreign-oriented publicity documentary,it embodies a whole image of contemporary China in the content and valuable in external publicity.Telling Chinese stories well and making the target-text readers accurately understand the connotation and the artistic conception of the source text and have the same responses and feelings as the original-text ones are very effective means of foreign-oriented publicity,which is exactly core concept of Nida’s functional equivalence theory.Therefore,the author translated the commentary of the documentary Amazing,My China under the guidance of Nida’s theory,endeavoring to reproduce the essence of the source text from four aspects of lexical,syntactic,textual and stylistic levels.By taking five types of linguistic expressions with Chinese characteristics as examples,the author aims to ensure that the target-text readers can get the same feelings and experiences as the original-text readersThe commentary is rich in words with Chinese characteristics,idioms,antithetical sentences,parallelism and ancient poetry excerpts,which embody the bright Chinese traditional culture and reflect China’s latest development.With high social,cultural and linguistic value,they reflect the guiding ideology of "Going Abroad of Chinese Traditional Culture" in the new era.Therefore,how to accurately grasp the style of the source text and embody it in the translation without losing its charm has become the focus and difficulty of this translation practice.This translation report takes four core aspects of Nida’s functional equivalence theory as the point cut,and discusses the translation methods and strategies of China-specific words,idioms,antithesis sentences,parallelism and ancient poetry excerpts in combination with the problems and solutions in the translation process,so as to reproduce the connotation and form of the original text and make English readers understand better about the documentary movie,know more about real China and it’s attitudes and culture,appreciate the unique charm of such civilized great powerAfter the theoretical research and translation practice,the author’s findings are four-fold:1)as for some China-specific words or technical term,transliteration can be applied in order to achieve the purpose of lexical equivalence and reflecting Chinese characteristics.When it comes to the neologism about the policies or systems of China,literal translation can best refer to the unique things of China,retain its beauty and transmits Chinese culture to the world;2)in view of four-idioms and antithesis,the principle of clearness and conciseness is essential to reflect the characteristics of Chinese language.Taking the rhyme and cultural image into consideration without changing the meaning of the source language meanwhile,literal translation plus annotation or free translation can be employed to convey the original text’s meaning and reflect its style;3)when translating poetry excerpts,recreation is a more suitable translation method as poetry are neat,rhythmical and concise in form,but rich in meaning and cultural connotation.To convey accurately the meaning and reflect the style vividly,the translator should adhere to the original and make flexible use of linguistic knowledge to maximize an equivalent effect in meaning,form and style;4)with regarding to the translation of parallel structures,the translator should master the accurate logic and cohesion among sentence structures and identify a suitable sentence pattern for it.Literal translation plus repetition or omission is usually employed.Sometimes,diverse words are selected in order to avoid monotonousness and in other cases same structures are chosen to enhance the power and rhythm.