The Functional Equivalence Theory In Wu Ningkun’s E/C Translation Of The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece. It is a tragic story about Gatsby, who pursues wealth by all means to obtain the love of Daisy. Many scholars have studied the novel in literary criticism, proving that it is a great work worth being translated and introduced into China for Chinese readers to appreciate and enjoy its excellent literary art and rich cultural connotation. Wu Ningkun’s Chinese version is the most popular in China. There have been some studies on the translation of the novel by employing different theories, i.e. cooperative principle and skopos theory, but there is no study from the perspective of Nida’s Functional Equivalence Theory (FET).The FET provides a new angle for translation study. The main concept of the FET is that a good translation is a closest natural equivalent to the source language (SL) message. In other words, the reaction of the target text readers should be equivalent to that of the SL readers. This theory, like the other theories, has its limitation, but it still provides guidance for fiction translation studies. As a novel, The Great Gatsby is equipped with the features of novels and the translation should correspond to the requirements of fiction translation, not only delivering the source text message, but reproducing the literary art and cultural implications in the source text.This study propose the research question:What can be found in the translation of The Great Gatsby by Wu Ningkun by employing the FET?The study shows that functional equivalence is achieved at the four levels of word, phrase, sentence and text through the translator’s comprehensive understanding of the whole novel and his proficient language skills, and that the readers of the TL text can appreciate and enjoy the literary art and cultural connotation of the novel in a similar way as the readers of the source text do. The achievement of optimal equivalence is not dependent on a particular technique, but on the comprehensive understanding of the work and the deliberate process of translating, including choices of words, sequencing of complicated sentences as well as addition or omission according to the contexts.The study on the translation of The Great Gatsby from the Functional Equivalence Theory is a relatively new angle. The findings of this study may complement the existing studies by providing more parameters for the evaluation of the translation of The Great Gatsby and other novels, or having guiding significance for the study and application of fiction translation theories and techniques.