Report On The Translation Of Art Works Under The Guidance Of Equivalence Theory

Even though China’s cultural exchange with the outside has been developing rapidly inrecent decades, translation of art works has not been paid as much attention to as other fields.Since there are few theories on the translation of art works, on the basis of analyzing thecharacteristics of the language in art works, this research tries to explore the applicability ofNida’s equivalence theory to the translation in this field. This theory mainly consists of formalequivalence and functional equivalence. The former is source language-oriented, trying to makethe target language reflect the source language’s form and content to the utmost. The latter pursuesthe closest and most natural translation in accordance with information of the source language, soas to help the target language readers to have nearly the same response to the message conveyed inthe translated text as the source language readers. Characteristics of the language in art works aremainly elegance, visuality, professionalism and comprehensiveness. In terms of formalequivalence, we tend to use such translation strategies and skills as literal translation,transliteration and foreignization. When it comes to functional equivalence, we often resort to freetranslation, conversion and domestication. Furthermore, literal translation, transliteration, freetranslation and conversion are translation skills that stem from language itself; whileforeignization and domestication are translation strategies which care more about the culturalaspect.Both aspects of equivalence theory have their own unique features and advantages, we oughtto choose different equivalence theory and its corresponding translation strategies and skills, incorrespondence with different texts of the art works.