A Function-equivalence View Of English-chinese Translation Of Dr.seuss’ Picture Books

It is the interplay between words and pictures that make picture books different from other children literature.As is researched,picture books are the best choice for storytelling,early and parent-child reading,which play an important role in cultivating children’s cognition,observation,communication,imagination,creativity and emotional development.With wider exchange between China and western countries and the more attention paid to the development of children,more and more foreign picture books are being introduced into China and the research on picture books are becoming an academic hot topic.How to make Chinese children enjoy these excellent picture books,translation is an effective way.Throughout the translation studies on picture book translation,they are limited,fragmented and one-sided.Some picture book translation has been studied on the basis of skopos theory,reception theory,aesthetic theory,and Nord’s functional model,but no one is researched from the perspective of Nida’s functional equivalence.In view of this,this dissertation attempts to probe into picture book translation on the basis of Nida’s functional equivalence theory.Nida(2004: 12)points that functional equivalence is in terms of the degree to which the receptors of the message in the receptor language respond to it in substantially the same manner as the receptors in the source language,which provides a new set of standard for translation criticism.That is to say,a translator should take fully readers’ response into consideration,making the response between source readers and target ones is similar.In order to improve the maneuverability and practicality of the functional equivalence theory,Nida also proposes six principles in deciding what the translators should do so as to create the closest natural equivalent translation.This paper chooses translated versions of picture books that are written and illustrated by Dr.Seuss,a famous designer,illustrator,graphic artist and children literature icon in American,from the aspect of phonetic,lexical,syntactic,and rhetoric level on the basis of Nida’s functional equivalence theory.This studyanalyzes the successful achievement and some loss for functional equivalence and testifies the feasibility of functional equivalence theory in guiding picture book translation.For the phonetic level,onomatopoeia and rhyme & rhythm are adopted in the source language.Not only onomatopoeia and rhyme & rhythm are used but also er-sound are added in the target language according to the features of Chinese language so as to acquire functional equivalence;for the lexical level,colloquialism,interjection and reduplication are all used in the source language and receptor language;for the syntactic level,methods of shortening,changing the voice,changing the part of speech,and changing the sentence order are employed because of different culture and different features of language;for the rhetorical level,simile & metaphor,personification and repetition are enumerated in English language and Chinese language.Through the research on versions of Dr.Seuss’ works,the author hopes that will arouse more studies on picture book translation and more Dr.Seuss’ other works will be translated and introduced into China,making Chinese readers also enjoy the feast of Dr.Seuss’ picture books.