A Report On The Translation Of Sunset Beach Under The Guidance Of Functional Equivalence (Excerpts)

This paper is a translation practice report.The translation material is selected from the novel Sunset Beach by the American writer Mary Kay Andrews.The translator is responsible for translating chapters 1 to 65 of this book.This translation practice is conducted under the guidance of Eugene Nida’s Functional Equivalence Theory.The core of Functional Equivalence Theory is to reproduce the information of the source language with the closest and most natural equivalence from semantics to style.This means that a translator must focus on the meaning and spirit of the original text in the process of translation,not on the language structure of the original text,that is,not on the formal correspondence.Therefore,under the guidance of Functional Equivalence Theory,the translator pays more attention to the content equivalence rather than the formal equivalence in the process of translation,trying to reproduce the original meaning of the novel.In order to reproduce the original information,the translator should make grammatical and lexical adjustments.Therefore,based on the theory of functional equivalence and the problems encountered in the process of translation,the author uses translation skills such as literal translation with annotation,word formation,negation,syntactic linearity,sentence restructuring,semantic supplement and reappearance and amplification to translate the original text,so as to achieve natural equivalence and meet the readers’ expectation.