A Report On E-C Translation Of Chinese Astrology:Early Chinese Occultism (Excerpt) Under The Guidance Of Functional Equivalence Theory

This translation project is the first two chapters of the book Chinese Astrology:Early Chinese Occultism by Paul Carus,a well-known American writer,literary critic and cultural critic.The book focuses on how the ancient Chinese predicted the future by observing celestial phenomena,and analyses it in comparison with Western astrology,pointing out the fundamental differences between Chinese astrology and Western counterpart.On this basis,the author further discusses when Chinese astrology originated and why it came to be so.As a typical representative of ancient Chinese studies,this work has strong academic and research value,and therefore the translator has chosen this text as her graduation translation project.Functional equivalence theory focuses on the point that translation should first ensure equivalence at the level of meaning in the source language,focus on information transmission,and then consider equivalence at the level of form.Also,rather than aiming for absolute “equivalence”,the translator should focus on relative“equivalence”.Nida has underlined time and time again that the goal of translation is to reproduce information,rather than to insist on consistency in expression.The core of the Nida’s functional equivalence theory throughout its development has been that the translation should be smooth and natural,the content should be meaningful and evocative and the readers should reflect similarly to those of original text.Taking Nida’s theory of functional equivalence as the guide,this report elaborates on the issues the translator ran into throughout the translation process and how to solve them from three levels: lexical,syntactic,and textual.Translation not only needs to accurately and comprehensively express the meaning of the original text,but also needs to select the closest and most natural words,sentences according to the context,content,culture and expression patterns of the target language,which requires the translator to adopt different translation strategies in the translation process so that the readers of the target language can produce the same reaction as the receptors of the source language,in order to achieve relative equivalence.The translator concludes by summarizing the knowledge gained and the lessons learned during the translation process,hoping to provide some reference for other translators who want to engage in the translation of such texts.