A Comparative Study Of Two Chinese Versions Of The Moon And Sixpence From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

The “functional equivalence theory” proposed by Nida,an American translation theorist,has attracted wide attention from the translation community and has exerted a profound influence on the study of translation.The functional equivalence theory evaluates the translation from the linguistic point of view.The theory emphasizes that translation should achieve functional equivalence,focusing on target readers and making the target readers have similar feelings to the TL as the correspondence of the SL receptors to the SL.The Moon and Sixpence is a novel written by William Somerset Maugham,a British novelist.It is also popular from all over the world.The Chinese version of this book has been reprinted many times and is interpreted by different translators.The most famous versions are that of Fu Weici and of Li Jihong.Those two Chinese versions have their own characteristics.Fu Weici’s version is believed to be the first and most popular one,while Li Jihong’s translation is easy to be understood with annotations.Based on Nida’s theory of functional equivalence,this thesis aims to make a comprehensive comparative study of Fu Weici’s and Li Jihong’s versions.First,this thesis introduces the theory of functional equivalence,The Moon and Sixpence and Maugham’s research status,and lists the development of functional equivalence theory and its application.Then,with a large number of examples,this thesis makes a specific study on the linguistic and cultural levels.This study affirms the significance of functional equivalence theory in the comparison of translation,but also points out that fuzziness and uncertainty of “reader’s response” also limits the application of this theory to a certain extent.