A Report Of English-Chinese Translation Of Wonder Under The Guidance Of Functional Equivalence Theory

This report is based on the experience of translating Wonder,a novel written for teenage children.It is a New York Time’s bestseller in 2015.It tells a story of a face-deformed boy and his experience after going to public school and finally makes it to live with what he was given and be liked by people around him.The report classifies the difficulties in translation and explores solutions under the guidance of Nida’s functional equivalence,thereby summing up the methods and strategies in children literature translation.Novels written for teenage children,a branch of children literature,express the writer’s best wishes for human beings and inspire children in a good way.Compared to novels written for adults,novels for teenagers are featured with relatively simple words and sentences.However,for a translator,it is not easy for Chinese teenage readers to have a similar reading experience as American teenage readers have for their mother languages differ in a lot of ways.According to Nida,qualified translation should achieve functional equivalence and “the readers of a translated text should be able to understand and appreciate it in essentially the same manner as the original readers did.Therefore,Nida’s theory can be applied in guiding the translation of children novel.This paper records the whole task of translating the novel and analyzes the role Nida’s functional equivalence plays in guiding the translation of novel written for teenagers from five parts,namely,words and phrases needing free translation,the translation of slangs,the reappearance of the hero’s characteristics and the translation of relatives.For each part,the author lists examples and discusses in detail.By doing so,some techniques are concluded and suggestions are offered to the translation of similar text.