A Report On The Translation Of The International Encyclopedia Of Education (Volume3)

At the end of twentieth century,functional equivalence was brought into China and caused a sensation in Chinese translation domain.As one of the most influential person of functional linguistic school,Nida put forward the theory of functional equivalence from the perspective of sociolinguistics and communicational function,arguing that translating means communicating.In the context of globalization,China’s cultural exchange with outside world is gradually increasing and advantage of equivalence theory plays an important role during communicative translation.The International Encyclopedia of Education,featuring academic texts,introduces the development and history of education around the world.The translation of The International Encyclopedia of Education follows the trends of cultural exchanges with outside world and educational globalization.From the perspective of cultural communication,functional equivalence theory is significant to the translation of words,sentences and contexts.Chinese scholar Liu Miqing put forward a more specific method to fulfill word equivalence,arguing that parameters of “best equivalence” improve the quality of word translation.Parameters include conceptive meaning,contextual meaning,formal meaning,stylistic meaning,cultural meaning and figurative meaning of words,which are used to calculate the equivalence values.During translating,the total value of a word equivalence can be figured out by analyzing the meanings.Under the guidance of Nida’s functional theory and Liu Miqing’s methodology,the author translated the International Encyclopedia of Education(volume3).Readers’ response,as the core part of functional equivalence and the key to judging the quality of translation,is abstract,individual,dynamic and unmeasurable.Hence,translation intention and principles ought to be taken into consideration and translation methods and strategies ought to be adopted flexibly.