A Report On The Translation Of Defining A21^st Century Education From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

As the society keeps developing, education is playing a more and more significantrole in the21stcentury in bringing up talents for social needs. Meanwhile,communication between China and the West in the advanced educational theories andideas requires more attention to educational text translation. Therefore, further studieson this issue have become a major aspect in social development. In China, however,researches conducted on educational translation were merely about development andcharacteristics of the modern educational translation.Under such circumstances, this report, with Chapter Two of Defining a21stCentury Education as an example is based on the Functional Equivalence Theory ofNida. In the light of Nida’s translation process theory, the translator analyzes the textfrom lexical, syntactic and discourse levels. Since the translation act of educational texthas a function of conveying information, the Functional Equivalence Theory isappropriate in guiding the translation process of it. Through translating and analyzingtext on education, this report summarizes some translation methods based onFunctional Equivalence Theory.The research findings of the report are as follows:(1) In order to achieve functional equivalence at lexical level, the translatorshould make a thorough analysis on features of source language. During the process,the translator applies certain methods to make the translated version more natural,including selecting the proper meaning according to the collocation, extending wordmeaning, changing abstract meaning into concrete meaning and using four-characteridioms.(2) In order to achieve functional equivalence at syntactic level, the translatorshould analyze and transfer the adverbial clauses and long difficult sentences inconformity to Chinese reading habits to make sure the original meaning is accuratelyexpressed.(3) In order to achieve functional equivalence at discourse level, thetranslator needs a better understanding of the cohesion, coherence and intentionality ofthe source text, which helps to acquire similar responses from the receivers of thetranslated version and the recipients of the original text. This can also guarantee the faithfulness to the source text.Based on the functional equivalence theory of Nida, this report has solved somerelevant problems in the translation process of educational text, and may have bothpractical and theoretical values towards the analysis and research on educational texttranslation.