A Report On The E-C Translation Of Listen To The Marriage Under The Guidance Of Functional Equivalence Theory

The source text of the present translation practice is selected from chapter ten to chapter fifteen of John Jay Osborn’s book,Listen to the Marriage.The source text was officially published in 2018 and it has not been translated into Chinese.The translation practice covers a total amount of about 10000 words and the content is about a fractured couple who learned to understand each other and reunited in the end with the marriage counselor’s help.The translation of this source text can introduce the way of Western couples seeking marriage counselors for help when their marriages run into trouble to Chinese couples,which can offer some inspirations.This translation practice belongs to novel translation,one of the categories of literary translation,which requires the translator to have a deep understanding of the meaning and artistic style of the source text and then reproduce the message and style of the source text in the translation.This requirement is in line with Eugene A.Nida’s functional equivalence theory.The functional equivalence theory includes lexical equivalence,syntactic equivalence,textual equivalence and stylistic equivalence.The ultimate goal of the theory is to provide the target readers with the most faithful and natural translation as received by the original readers.The translator uses Nida’s functional equivalence theory to guide the process of translation practice,analyzing the cases in translation practice from four levels: lexical,syntactic,textual and stylistic,which ensures the representation of the style and content of the original text and the similarities between the original readers’ feelings towards the original text and the target readers’ feelings towards the translated text.This translation practice demonstrates the effectiveness of functional equivalence theory in guiding the novel translation.