C-E Translation of Jiang Zilong’s Short Story Mr. Big on the Basis of Functional Equivalence Theory

Abstract

In recent years, an increasing amount of excellent foreign novels and short stories are translated and introduced into China while limited Chinese short stories are presented overseas. This paper, on the basis of Nida’s functional equivalence theory, analyzes and reviews the translated version of the short story “Mr. Big” written by Jiang Zilong through the application of functional equivalence theory from lexical and syntactic level. The translator, with the target language reader at the core, fully comprehends the original text, emotions, style, and mood of the short story, and appropriately uses various translation methods, such as transliteration with annotation and literal translation for translating culture-loaded words; literal translation, liberal translation, supplementary translation, divided translation, adapted translation, conversed translation, etc. to faithfully reproduce the original content and artistic style of the original work, and achieve functional equivalence. This paper is supposed to enhance the foreign understanding of Jiang Zilong’s short story and to provide reference and inspirations for Chinese-English translation of novels and short stories.