Translation Report On Leonardo Da Vinci Related To Functional Equivalence Theory

This report is about translation practice of biography from English to Chinese.The translation material of this report is selected from Leonardo da Vinci,which is the fifth biography,published by American biographer Walter Isaacson in 2017.This text differs from the previous ones that mainly studies his remaining thousands of manuscripts.These manuscripts refer to many different research fields,such as birds,weapons,mathematics,and civil engineering.This text promotes the communication between Chinese and western culture to some degree.Owing to be published in 2017,this text has not been studied by researchers in the world.With the development of the global economy,biographical study has become more and more significant and popular in the field of translation.The translation materials in this report are selected from parts of chapters,which mainly studies Leonardo’s manuscripts.Therefore,the biographical translation can be further enriched through the translation and analysis of this translation report.As a type of literary translation,biographical translation requires translators to reproduce the original meaning and style,which achieves similar responses from target readers.The core of Nida’s functional equivalence theory conforms to biographical features of literariness and effectiveness.Nida’s functional equivalence theory is an important theoretical foundation,which has a strong inspiration and practical guidance function for the translation of literary works.It emphasizes the complete equivalence of language function and connotation,but doesn’t emphasize the strict correspondence of language itself.That is to say,functional equivalence theory stresses the original meaning and style rather than the original form,the quality of translation depends on response of coherence both original and target readers.Thus,functional equivalence theory has more flexibility and application in the translation of biographical text.In the process of translation practice,the author has effectively combined the functional equivalence theory with this biographical text.The translator analyzed in detail from four aspects of functional equivalence theory:lexical level,syntactic level,textual level and stylistic level.For these four equivalences,the translator specifically adopted some translation methods,such as choice of words,addition and omission,conversion of word class,long and difficult sentence analysis,and context analysis,which can translate and analyze the contents of the text.In terms of the guidance of functional equivalence theory,the translation can better reproduce the original text and meet the requirement of biography.When such biographical text is translated,the barriers and constraints of the language should be broken through.What’s more,the content and meaning of the original text also should be deeply conducted and analyzed so as to better reproduce the original text and transform the literary works flexibly.Therefore,this report combined the translation case of Leonardo da Vinci to analyzed and consider deeply in line with functional equivalence theory,Which can reproduce the original text better.Meanwhile,the cultural exchange between English and Chinese can be promoted.