A Study Of Strategies In The English-Chinese Translation Of Academic Works:the Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

The English-Chinese translation of academic works has practical and theoretical significance and the study of such translation helps improve the quality of translation on one hand and enrich academic translation theories on the other. The application of Nida’s functional equivalence theory to academic translation is useful in that the theory requires that the translated text should reproduce the message in the source text and the main purpose of academic translation is to convey information. The theory attaches importance to the reader’s response so that the translation should read smoothly, thus offers certain freedom and flexibility for the translators when translating long sentences and passive voice. Functional equivalence also requires the translated text should be the closest natural equivalence of the source text in style and the translated text is supposed to be an academic work that is formal, objective and strong in logic.This report, by analyzing the author’s translation of an academic text from the perspective of functional equivalence theory, endeavors to generalize some useful strategies for English-Chinese translation of academic works. In order to realize equivalence on lexical level, the translator should derive accurate translation by contextual analysis. As for syntactic equivalence, reader response should be given priority and the original sentences, especially for complex or long sentences which are frequently used in academic works, should be translated in accordance with the way of expression in Chinese as well as preserving the original meaning. In terms of textual equivalence, translators should keep in mind the difference of cohesion devices in English and Chinese, and make adjustments of cohesive words (including those for the purposes of specification, repetition and omission) when necessary.