A Comparative Study Of English Versions Of The Poems By Tsangsyangs Gyatso In Light Of Functional Equivalence Theory

The 6~thh Dalai Lama Tsangyang Gyatso(1683-1706),not only used to be considered as the highest religious leader in Tibetan Buddhism,but also is regarded as a talented and famous poet both at home and abroad.Tsangyang Gyatso's poems with distinctive characteristics have strong vitality and sustain artistic charm.These poems belong to the precious part of the minority national literature and the gems in the Chinese literature,even in the world literature.At the same time,as an essential section of Chinese national classics,the spread and influence of Tsangyang Gyatso's poems can promote the development of classics translation into English and the cultural communication between China and foreign countries.The functional equivalence theory was proposed by American translation theoretician Eugene A.Nida,and it is widely accepted in translation studies.The functional equivalence theory advocated that translation should be receptor-oriented and focused on equivalence of receptor response rather than equivalence of form,emphasizing that the translators should produce the closest natural equivalent in target language and contact the receptors with the behaviors in their culture context so as to make the target readers have the same response as the original readers.The thesis is divided into three parts,respectively the introduction,the main body and the conclusion.The introduction makes a summary about the poet's whole life,a brief introduction about the contents and the features of Tsangyang Gyatso's poems,literature review of Tsangyang Gyatso's poems both at home and abroad,research significance,the overview of the functional equivalence theory and the frame structure of this thesis.The main body falls into four chapters.From the first chapter to the last chapter,respectively,it compares two English versions at lexical level,syntactic level,stylistic level and cultural level from the perspective of the functional equivalence theory and explores the translation features and translation skills of each English versions at each level,then discusses which English version achieved the functional equivalence better.The conclusion concludes the study findings and then points out the limitations of this study in order to provide some references for the further research.The thesis comes to the conclusion that both of these two English versions are regarded as the adequate translation with their own characteristics on the whole.At the lexical and syntactic level,Yu Daoquan's translation tended to use literal translation while Li Zhengshuan's version inclined to adopt liberal translation,and both of them conveyed basically the connotation of the vocabularies in the target language.Nevertheless,Li Zhengshuan's translation seemed more concise and communicative than Yu Daoquan's version.At the stylistic level,Yu Daoquan preserved the plain and simple style of the original poems whereas Li Zhengshuan reproduced the rhyme beauty.In terms of the cultural level,Yu Daoquan mainly adopted the foreignization strategy while Li Zhengshuan applied the domestication strategy in most cases in order to increase the readability of translation.However,as far as the functional equivalence theory is concerned,Li Zhengshuan's version applied various translation strategies and methods,which achieved the functional equivalence better in target language.