A Discussion on Translating Chinese Prose into English文献综述

 2022-08-29 11:08

  1. Previous studies on Nidarsquo;s Functional Equivalence

“Functional Equivalence” is a key concept in Nidarsquo;s translation theory. It was first called Dynamic equivalence in 1964, in order to avoid misunderstandings on the theory,Nida changed its name into dynamic equivalence.

Functional Equivalence has been studied by many Chinese scholars and researchers, like JinDi ,Tan Zaixi ,Ma Huijuan. Besides, some university graduates have worked on Nidarsquo;s translation theory in their papers.

Jin Di has similar views with Nida about the role of receptors in translation when he did not know about Nidarsquo;s dynamic equivalence theory. In On Translation :with special reference to Chinese to English(1984,with Nida), to a large degree he adopted Nidarsquo;s dynamic equivalence, namely,” the relation of target language receptors to the target language text should be roughly equivalent to the relationship between the original text”. And he proved the validity of dynamic equivalence in dealing with many difficulties involved in Chinese—English and English—Chinese translation with many convincing examples from his own experience as a translator and translation consultant. He discusses the theory in his book A Research on Equivalence Theory, which includes its nature, principle and development. And he mentioned two relationships, respectively, the relationship between accuracy and flexibility, the relationship between accuracy and smoothness.

Tan Zaixi did a large amount of work on Nidarsquo;s Translation theory, he is an important person in doing the research on Nidarsquo;s Translation Theory. He introduces Nidarsquo;s theory in his book Nidarsquo;s theory on translation, which became the best-seller a year after it was published(1984).It covers the nature of translation, communicative function of language, lexical meaning, figurative meaning and so on. And it gives a division of development of Nidarsquo;s theory. Tan also mentioned the great influence of Nidarsquo;s theory on the development of translation. In his book A short History of Translation in the Wes , the western translation theories are briefly introduced, including Nidarsquo;s functional equivalence theory. Besides, he gave an objective comment on Nidarsquo;s Translation Theory by pointing out some limitations in the theory.

Ma Huiguan makes a deep research on Nidarsquo;s Translation Theory in her book A Study on Nidarsquo;s Translation Theory. The book discusses the development of Nidarsquo;s Translation Theory in China and in the western world, introduces Nidarsquo;s views on translation, like Nidarsquo;s concept of translation equivalence, talks about the application of Nidarsquo;s Translation Theory in Bible Translation, explores its validity and limitations in literary translation. Functional Equivalence Theory, which was first called Dynamic Equivalence Theory, was mentioned in the book, Ma gives a brief introduction of its different phases, namely, Dynamic Equivalence and Formal Equivalence, Dynamic Equivalence and Formal Correspondence, Functional Equivalence and Formal Correspondence. And controversy over dynamic equivalence was referred to as well.

2. Previous Studies on Prose Translation

Attention has always been put on literary translation, but most of it was put on novel and poetry, prose translation was the one less emphasized. There are people who noticed the splendidness of prose began to do prose translation and relevant researches.

Burton Raffel, a famous American scholar in this field, wrote a book called the Art of Translating Prose, in which he put forward the idea that syntactic structures of the original in the source language should be strictly translated into the target language, as structure represents the spirit of author as well as style of prose. He believes the rigorousness in syntactic structure translation would bring about the success in translation.

Halaire Belloc who is one of the most prolific writers in England in the early 20th century, laid down 6 rules for the translators of the prose texts in his book On Translation. He attaches importance to both the syntactic structures and content of the prose. He holds the idea that there was a moral responsibility to the original text, and he thinks that translators could alter the structure and sequence of the text while translating so as to make the translated work conformed to the stylistic and idiomatic norms of the target language.

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