A Study On Two Chinese Versions Of The Old Man And The Sea From The Theory Of Nida’s Functional Equivalence

This thesis attempts to make some research on Wu Lao and Eileen Chang’s Chinese versions of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea from Nida’s functional equivalence theory. The author analyzes the two Chinese versions from the four key points of Nida’s functional equivalence theory, including reader’s response becomes a new translation evaluation dimension, informative as the most useful function of language, cultural transplantation is necessary in translation and stylistic equivalence is important in functional equivalence theory. However, the functional equivalence theory has its weak points, such as it puts so much emphasis on reader’s response but ignores the authority of the original text and it puts little emphasis on form. The Old Man and the Sea is Hemingway’s representative work and it has a big influence in the literature field of the world, many Chinese translators have translated it into Chinese. In this thesis, the author chooses Wu Lao and Eileen Chang’s versions to make a comparision. The author of the thesis thinks it is a good research case and it is of great value to do the literature research. As Nida’s functional equivalence theory has a big guidance in the literature translation field, so the author chooses it to be the theoretical basis to analyze the two Chinese versions. Under the guidance of Nida’s functional equivalence theory, from the angles of word, sentence and discourse, the author analyzes whether the two Chinese versions are in accordance with the original one. On the level of word, the author analyzes the translation of name of food and fish and the culturally-loaded word, on the level of sentence, the authors analyzes the translation of simple sentence and figure of speech, on the level of discourse, the author analyzes the translation of dialogue and psychological activity. The result is Wu Lao’s translation version is closer to the original one. Through using Nida’s functional equivalence theory, it provides a new perspective to analyze the Chinese versions and through the analysis of examples, Nida’s functional equivalence theory is practiced and self-proved.