On The Principle Of Functional Equivalence For Translating Dramatic Texts

With the rapid development of globalization, the cultural interaction between countries is becoming more and more frequent. Therefore, translation in today’s society has undertook more important social responsibilities. The principle of translation has always been one of the most important problems that translators and translation theorists pay attention to. The "functional equivalence" principle proposed by American translation theorist Eugene Nida is one of the most popular principles among translators. In his opinion, translators should make their recipients understand the source text to the maximum extent and as accurate as possible. When translating London in Early Modern English Drama, the author try to apply the theory of "functional equivalence" to the translation of the drama texts cited in the book, and summarize some specific principles of equivalence from the perspective of language features.London in Early Modern English Drama is a monograph that discusses drama, and the author cites a lot of drama texts. The translation of those drama texts is one of the most difficult parts in the translating process. Based on the functional equivalence principle, we should make the translated text have the same artistic appeal as the source text. It is critical to remain the dramatic language features of the source text. When translating this book, the translator of the present thesis analyzes the language features of those cited drama texts in the first place, and find out those features such as colloquialism, actability, brevity, characterization and annotation-less. Secondly, the translator should remain as many language features of source text as possible during translation to keep the function of dramatic language. The author uses some specific translation strategies, including stylistic equivalence, rhythmic equivalence, cultural equivalence and so on.