A Study Of Li Wenjun’s Chinese Version Of The Secret Garden From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence

A large amount of excellent foreign children’s literary works have been translated into Chinese since the May Fourth Movement. Compared with the prosperous translated works, the corresponding criticism is not enough. The Secret Garden is the representative work of the famous American female author Frances Hodgson Burnett. In China, there are several Chinese versions translated by some famous scholars, such as Zhang Runfang, Bao Huinan, Li Wenjun, Zhang Jianping and Xu Hong. However, the recent researches mainly study this novel from the perspective of feminism, only a few articles have been done to explore the theoretical study on the translated versions of The Secret Garden.Considering the special readers of children’s literature, its translation has many particularities. Translators of children’s literature should do their best to make children comprehend the translation in the light of their unique characteristics. Nida’s functional equivalence theory lays stress on the importance of readers’ responses during the translation process. What’s more, it emphasizes that the target readers should understand and appreciate the target text as well as the source language readers.Accordingly, under the guidance of Nida’s functional equivalence theory, the present author analyzes Li Wenjun’s Chinese version of The Secret Garden from three aspects. Through the analysis, this thesis is aimed at answering the following questions:1. In what aspects has Li’s Chinese version realized functional equivalence?2. What principles have governed Li’s translation of The Secret Garden viewed from functional equivalence theory?Through the comparative study between the original and target versions, the author has reached following conclusions:1. Li’s Chinese version has realized functional equivalence in terms of meaning, style and culture. 2. Combining the research on different types of translation with the analysis of target texts, the author tries to explore the principles governing Li’s Chinese version. It comes to a conclusion that two principles, to focus on the increase of children’s interest and emphasis on the instructive functions, have governed Li’s translation.Through the analysis of Li’s Chinese version, this study is aimed at providing a case study to validate the guidance of functional equivalence to the translation practice of children’s literature and arousing more researches on translated versions of The Secret Garden and other children’s literary works.