A Comparative Study On Two Chinese Versions Of Lonesome Dove From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence

Lonesome Dove is one of the American western novelists Larry McMurtry's masterpieces,which was published in 1985.Upon its publication Lonesome Dove became the bestseller of New York Times,and its author Larry McMurtry was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in fiction.This novel established Larry McMurtry's reputation in American literary field.However,his works did not draw enough attention in the study of American western fiction during that time.Translation,as one cross-cultural and cross-linguistic behavior,is easily influenced by time period,cultural background,and social context.Literature translation needs to take choice of word,context,cultural background and social environment into consideration,which make literature translation a difficult task.Studies of this novel are mostly focused on the literary point of view in China and abroad,which is not comprehensive enough,and there is even less studies of Lonesome Dove from perspective of translation.There are only two Chinese versions of Lonesome Dove in China:one was translated during the late 1980s,the other one was translated during the late 1990s.The former is???????,the latter?????.These two Chinese versions are distinctly different in the title of the name,which may cause confusion on readers'cognition.This dissertation tries to compare these two Chinese versions of Lonesome Dove in terms of vocabulary,sentence,discourse,and literary form,in light of Eugene Nida's functional equivalence theory,and hopes to make up for the deficiency in western fiction translation,to arouse scholars' attention to western fiction and its translations,and enhance the status of western literature,and offer some suggestions to readers' understanding of western novels.