On Translating The Essay Style From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

The source text of this translation practice,Su Tungpo’ Breakout,is selected from Notes in My Moumtaom Abpde written by Yu Qiuyu.As style is the soul of an essay,essay translation requires the translator to have a deep knowledge of the original author’s style and characteristics,then conveying the original text’s meaning and reflecting its style with the closest natural equivalent of the source language.By doing so,the target-text readers can have the same feeling and response as the original-text readers as well as accurately understand the original text’s connotation and appreciate its artistic conception.And this is precisely in line with Eugene Nida’s functional equivalence theory.Therefore,the author translated Su Tungpo’ Breakout under the guidance of Nida’s theory,endeavoring to reflect the essay ’s style in the three aspects of language,rhetoric and writing.In this way,the author aims to ensure that the target readers can feel and experience the same as the original readers.The essay is fluent in language and profound in meaning.It has insights and quotations,mirroring Yu Qiuyu’s "great cultural essay" style and showing the grand manner and realm of Chinese essay.Therefore,how to accurately grasp the original text’s style and reflect it in the translated text without losing its charm is the key and difficult point of this translation practice.This translation report,combined with the problems and solutions during the translation of Yu Qiuyu’s essay,takes the most distinct style of the original text—language style,rhetorical style,and writing style as the analysis object,and explores the translation of the style of essay based on Nida’s functional equivalence theory,together with appropriate translation strategies.In this way,the author strives to reproduce the meaning and style of the source text,so that the English readers can know better about the writer Yu Qiuyu,appreciate the spirit of his work,and feel the unique charm of Chinese essay.After the theoretical research and translation practice,the author’s findings are three-fold:1)at the language level,dealing with parataxis,the author has restructured the sentences,using addition and division to make the translation more natural and fluent and as for vagueness,the author has employed literal translation to retain its beauty;2)at the rhetoric level,based on the target readers’ ability of understanding and acceptance,the author has either reserved or shifted these figures of speech like simile,quotation,rhetorical question and parallelism by employing literal translation,free translation and omission;3)at the writing level,in view of its distinctive and critical thinking from multi-dimension and unique viewpoint,the author has utilized literal translation,free translation and transliteration with annotation to convey the original text’s meaning and reflect its style.Moreover,the author has deeply understood that functional equivalence theory’s requirements of taking the source language as the center,stressing on reproducing the spirit and style of the original with the closest natural equivalent of the source language to produce a similar response between the target language receptors and the original receptors are of great constructive values to the translation of essay’s style.