Exploring Bestselling Novel Translation With The Guidance Of Functional Equivalence Theory

As entertainment media becomes more diverse, bestsellers have developed into a relatively independent form of mass culture. Being an important kind of bestseller, bestselling novels are favorite readings for the public. They have a wide range of audiences because they cater to the psychological needs of the public. With the development of the global economy,bestselling novels are no longer limited to a certain country, but serve readers all over the world. Translation increasingly plays an important role in their circulation.As a type of literary translation, bestselling novel translation requires translators to elicit similar responses from target readers through reproducing the original meaning and style.This complies with the Functional Equivalence Theory which emphasizes readers' responses.The core of Nida's Functional Equivalence Theory is: translators should translate the source language into the closest natural equivalent, and the translated text should be judged by the response of target readers. In a word, what Functional Equivalence Theory highlights is the original meaning and style rather than the original form, and the quality of the translated text depends on the degree to which target readers comprehend and appreciate the version.Therefore, Functional Equivalence Theory is of significance in the translation of literary works.This thesis first reviews the characteristics of bestselling novels and then the factors involved in their translation. Then, it briefly describes the background, development and main content of Functional Equivalence Theory, testifying to its feasibility in bestselling novel translation. Thirdly, taking Chapter Four of The Best of Me as an example, it analyzes the English-Chinese translation strategies from three levels: paraphrase, word-class shift and omission at the lexical level; splitting and amplification at the syntactic level and rewriting and combination of dialogues and descriptions at the textual level. Finally, it sums up strategies in English-Chinese bestselling translation in hope of offering reference for further study.