Application Of Functional Equivalence In EST Translation

With the development of economic globalization, science and technology communication between different countries becomes more frequent. During this process, EST translation plays an essential role and the quality of translation has a major effect on how readers understand the text, while some inferior translations could even cause irreversible loss when they are put into use. As a result, to improve the quality of EST translation is an urgent duty and obligation for translators.Eugene. A. Nida, an American translator and translation theorist puts forward a famous translation theory called functional equivalence. Nida points out that translation is to reproduce the message of source language from meanings to style by using the most natural and equivalent language. Between the two, meaning is the fist consideration and style is the second. And a good translation can be stated as "The readers of a translated text should be able to understand and appreciate it in essentially the same manner as the original readers did."This paper studies on the case of "Instruction Sheet of Interphone" and features of EST translation to analyze how Nida’s functional equivalence theory is used as a guide in EST translation, and then points out that a translator should insist on the following three points when doing EST translations:having an accurate understanding about the source language; knowing well about the cognitive context and linguistic habit of readers; recreating an accurate translation text. In this way, a translator can reproduce in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source language message, and improve the reality, accuracy, and readability of the translated.