A Study Of English Translation Of Modern Chinese Phatic Communion From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence

Thanks to the constantly increasing comprehensive power,China has been drawing the attention of the world.Westerners can be seen almost in every city and there is a trend to go abroad for various purposes.Naturally there are more chances of language exchanging between English and Chinese.As an essential form of daily communication,phatic communion plays a crucial role in daily socializing.Although there have been fruitful results on the study of phatic communion home and abroad,most of them concentrate on the phatic expressions within one specific language.The study of the translation of Chinese phatic communion,especially from the perspective of functional equivalence,is rarely found.Since it was put forward,Nida's translation theory of functional equivalence,formerly known as dynamic equivalence,has been a focus in the translation field and enlightened the translation world.Nida attaches great importance to functional equivalence that receptors of translated text are supposed to appreciate what the receptors of source text comprehend.His theory has been widely applied to the translation of varied texts.It can be utilized in the translation of Chinese phatic communion.This thesis aims at exploring the translation of Chinese phatic communion from the perspective of functional equivalence,and putting forward certain translation strategies and principles.It firstly presents a review of the study of phatic communion along with its translation and introduces the definition,function and classifications of phatic communion.Next,the key framework of Nida's functional equivalence theory is summarized,which lays a theoretical foundation for the translation practice of Chinese phatic communion in the following part.In the main body of the thesis,the author collects some phatic expressions from the novel The Ordinary World by Lu Yao,a well-known contemporary Chinese writer,as the object of the study,and explores the equivalent translation of modern Chinese phatic communion from the perspective of functional equivalence.In the end,effective translation approaches and principles are concluded from the translation practice,in the aim of realizing the functional equivalence in the process of translating Chinese phatic communion.The study reveals that English counterparts for Chinese phatic expressions are scarcely found in the process of translating phatic expressions,due to the fact that phatic systems of Chinese and English differ obviously.Under the guidance of the theory of functional equivalence,translator s can realize functional equivalence by employing the translation approaches: addition,subtraction and alteration in terms of tone,syntax,lexical items,etc..Thisstudy has explored the translation of Chinese phatic communion to a certain exten t and may hopefully serve instructively for other translation practice.