Functional Equivalence Theory Research Articles

Error Analyses on English-language Public Signs in Shanghai Shopping Malls

Shanghai has recently undergone unprecedented transformation. With this level of international activity, the world expects Shanghai to be a model of standardized English-language public signs in China, and one would expect the city to apply a high standard to meet this expectation. However, this is not the case. English signs have the role of providing proper guidance for the international visiting public, but mistakes in usage defeat that purpose. This thesis focuses primarily on an error analysis of the English-language public signs in the most bustling and hustling commercial areas in Shanghai: Xujiahui, Huaihai Rd., Lujiazui, and West Nanjing Road. In addition to offering a collection of English-language translation errors from the major shopping malls of Shanghai, this thesis also investigates some of the errors in previous publications on English-language public-sign translation, which to a degree have misled the public for a long tisme. However, this thesis is not confined to error analyses using Nida’s functional equivalence theory as a foundation; this thesis also proposes constructive strategies for avoiding future errors. The point of this thesis is to determine why translators make mistakes, and how they can avoid these mistakes. As such, this is a significant research with academic merit.

Translation Methods of Chinese Prose from the Perspective of Functional Equivalence Theory—Taking the Translation of Wild Grass by Zhang Peiji as an Example

Modern Chinese prose is an important part of Chinese culture and literature, so translation of modern Chinese prose becomes increasingly important. Prose has the following unique features: flexible in form but condensed in spirit, with emotional, elegant and concise language. In order to convey these features in Chinese-English translation, we can adopt functional equivalence theory. With reader’s response as its core, the theory holds that the closest natural equivalence should be achieved in translation so that the target readers will have the same response in terms of appreciating and understanding of the original text. This paper takes Wild Grass translated by Zhang Peiji as an example and proves that functional equivalence can be applied in the translation of modern Chinese prose.

A Comparative Study of the Three English Versions of Lines Sent to the North Written during Night Rains from the Perspective of Transitivity

The poem Lines Sent to the North Written during Night Rains is one of the most famous poems of the late Tang poet Li Shangyin. It is widely favored by translators and has many English versions. Through the literature research, it is found that there are few studies of its English versions combined with the linguistic tool of transitivity. This paper aims to study the poem Lines Sent to the North Written during Night Rains and its three English versions from the perspective of system-functional linguistics, taking the concept of transitivity as a theoretical tool, supplemented by the theory of functional equivalence to evaluate the three English versions. According to the results of transitivity characteristic analysis and functional equivalence evaluation, it is found that keeping the transitivity characteristics of the original and the translation consistent is actually a kind of application and embodiment of the principle of functional equivalence, and the change of transitivity characteristics does not necessarily violate the principle of functional equivalence, because in specific circumstances, the transformation of process types can also help to achieve the effect of meaning equivalence, reproduce the artistic conception, and finally realize the goal of functional equivalence.

Tuning in: can humans use auditory cues for spatial reorientation?

ABSTRACTThe bulk of the research in spatial reorientation has studied how visual cues guide behavior. This project aims to explore the role of auditory cues. Using a find-and-replace paradigm in a circular search space, blindfolded sighted participants were able to reorient successfully using only auditory landmarks, albeit with errors larger than those found in visual-based reorientation. Importantly, for the first time, it was found that people encoded an ambiguous cue in addition to the certain cue, even though it was unnecessary and insufficient for solving the task. Results are discussed in the context of the resistance to using auditory cues spontaneously and the theory of functional equivalence.

E-C Translation of Hollywood Film Titles

The title is the essence of a film, the business card of the film. Different from ordinary textual translation, film title translation conveys specific purposes. The quality of film title translation is directly related to the acceptance of the film in market. Under the background of commercial marketing, maximizing the box-office return and restoring, highlighting or even optimizing the brand effect in the process of title translation is not only the concern of interest stakeholders, but also the new mission for every translator. Based on Nida’s Functional Equivalence Theory and the Skopos Theory, the paper first analyzes functions of film title. Then, it explores the translation methods of Hollywood film titles translation in order to provide a new perspective for the film title translators. Some traditional translation methods are adopted in film title translation: amplification, literal translation, transliteration and free translation; while some creative strategies including adaptation/revision and parody are applied to achieve a film title’s functions.

On Translation of Government Work Report from the Perspective of Functional Equivalence

Since implementing reform and opening up, China has obtained remarkable achievements in the areas of economy, politics, military, culture as well as international leverage. In this process, translation plays a vital role for it concerns about reputation and image of China. Translation of the government work report, which involves development status of economy, politics, education, people’s livelihood etc., contributes to help foreign readers to know China’s national situation and strengthen China’s international status. Nida’s functional equivalence theory is a reader-oriented theory that echoed the purpose of government work report translation. On the basis of the functional equivalence theory, this thesis tries to explore the translation of the government work report so as to provide reference for further study of the translation of similar texts.

On C-E Translation of Relic Texts in Museums from a Functional Equivalence Perspective: A Case Study of Hubei Provincial Museum

Museums play an important role in China’s communication with the world and demonstrate to some extent China’s soft power. As China further strengthens its international exchanges, more and more people hope to know China through its history and culture. However, due to the lingual and cultural distinctions, there are many unavoidable problems in translating Chinese relic texts (Source Text or ST) into English texts (Target Text or TT). As Eugene Nida said in his functional equivalence theory, the Target Reader’s (TR) comprehension and appreciation of the translation is significant. Therefore, in translating relic texts, attention should be paid to how the TR can understand and accept the content. This thesis aims at finding proper translation principles and methods by analyzing the translations of the relic texts in Hubei Provincial Museum from the perspective of the core concepts of functional equivalence theory. Through a study on the functional equivalence theory, the thesis finds three principles of translating relic texts: accuracy, readability and acceptability. An analysis of the relic texts of Hubei Provincial Museum has led to several translation methods including addition, omission, paraphrasing and rewriting, which help to achieve the functional equivalence of relic texts translation.

Denotacja – humor – tabu

Denotation – Humour – TabooThis analysis takes as its subject jokes about Poles that appeared in two US-American sitcoms: The Big Bang Theory (Teoria wielkiego podrywu) and 2 Broke Girls (Dwie spłukane dziewczyny), as well as their official Polish TV translations made for Comedy Central Polska channel. The selected examples refer to Polish traditions, history, and stereotypes about Polish people. They were divided into three categories according to their subject: a joke based on a stereotype, jokes making Poles look exotic, and jokes referring to Polish-Jewish relations, and the history of World War II. The aim here is accordingly: to characterize the original jokes, to analyze their official Polish voice-over translation, and to consider the potential differences in the reception of given fragments by the sourceculture and target-culture viewers. This paper refers to the characteristics of sitcom as a text genre and Eugene A. Nida and Charlesa R. Taber’s theory of functional equivalence.

Application of Functional Equivalence Theory in Civil Engineering Text Translation

Civil engineering English is more widely used and has become an indispensable part of professional fields with the rapid development of economy. Its texts and syntax features have attracted the attention of some experts. Based on the Functional Equivalence theory, this paper will provide a new method reference for relevant texts translation studies and summarize some translation strategies from words, sentences and chapters, including literal translation and sequential displacement to provide some references for professional text translation, reading and writing.

从功能对等角度分析《2019年政府工作报告》的英译技巧

从功能对等角度分析《2019年政府工作报告》的英译技巧

A Study on the Application of Functional Equivalence to Business English E-C Translation

The “functional equivalence” advanced by the famous American translation theorist, Eugene Nida has been widely used by various translators and has had a profound impact on China’s translation field. The application of functional equivalence theory to business English E-C(English-to-Chinese) translation is of great significance to the future translation of business English. Based on that, this thesis studies how the functional equivalence theory is applied to business English E-C translation from the view of equivalence of semantic message, equivalence of stylistic message and equivalence of cultural message with the practice of E-C translation effectively in order to ensure the accessibility and efficient communication of international business activities.

Context cultures, translation strategies and learning efficiency of accounting standards: experimental evidence based on ASBE and IFRS texts

ABSTRACTAlthough the Chinese Accounting Standards for Business Enterprise (ASBE) has substantially converged with the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in content, it adopts a localized style in terms of structure and language characteristics. As such, it differs markedly from the IFRS in linguistics. Using context culture theory, we compare the ASBE’s high-context feature to the IFRS’s low-context feature. Using functional equivalence theory, we identify the ‘foreignizing’ feature of the Chinese IFRS and the ‘domesticating’ feature of the ASBE texts, from a translation perspective. We empirically study the learning efficiency of ASBE and Chinese IFRS, and find that the ASBE high-context culture is not conducive to solving accounting problems and a domesticating translation is helpful to improving the learning efficiency of accounting standards especially in complex task models. We further explore text completeness and readability as intermediary factors in how context culture and translation strategy influence learning efficiency.

Strategies of Business English Translation from the Perspective of Functional Equivalence

The paper begins with the introduction of Nida’s functional equivalence theory, which is introduced to be reasonable guidance for business translation. Under the theory, plenty of examples and cases are quoted and analyzed, achieving functional equivalence in meaning, style and culture at the word level, the sentence level and the discourse level. This result indicates that Nida’s theory of functional equivalence can be best applied in business English translation and functional equivalence can be achieved.

An Analysis of Zhang Peiji’s Translation Carpenter Lao Chen from Functional Equivalence Theory in Terms of Meaning

There are a large number of great prose works in China, but compared with other literary genres, the research on prose translation by translators and scholars has long been lagging behind other literary genres for many years. Zhang Peiji, a distinguished translator in China, has made great contributions to the development of modern Chinese prose translation and his works have exerted tremendous influence over the translation field. Among his books, the four volumes of Selected Modern Chinese Essays are especially famous and worth our further research because of the application of many translation theories. Functional equivalence theory is one of the translation theories, which is put forward by Eugene A. Nida and emphasizes to produce the closet equivalent of the source language message.

Synonym Coordination in English Legislative Texts and Its Translation

Synonym coordination is a common and intriguing linguistic phenomenon in legal texts, especially in legislative texts. Synonyms have been explored from different perspectives in the prior studies, but few studies have been done on synonym coordination. This paper discusses the pervasiveness, characteristics and classification of synonym coordination in English legislative texts. It has been found that the pervasiveness of synonym coordination is attributed to the historical, rhetoric and legal factors. Synonym coordination can be divided into three types: absolute synonym coordination, relative synonym coordination and relevant synonym coordination. Based on Nida’s theory of functional equivalence, the paper puts forward the corresponding translation methods for each type. This study will shed light on the further studies on synonym co-occurrence.

A Study of Subtitling From the Perspective of Functional Equivalence Theory

A Study of Subtitling From the Perspective of Functional Equivalence Theory

On the Translation of Long and Complex English Sentences

Since the 1st century AD the translation of Buddhist in China and from the ancient Greece the translation of Bible, a host of masters have published wisdoms and insights on translation according to their practical experience of translating. Various kinds of translation theory such as Eugene Nada’s functional equivalence theory, skopos theory and so on has come out. But a complete work on the analysis of long and complex English translation is very few. Until the early years of 20 century when translation has been defined as a subject of science, long and difficult English sentence began to go into the research scope of scholars. Besides, as it known to all translators, sentence is the ideal unit for English-Chinese translation. Meanwhile, long and complex sentence claims to be the key and most difficult one. Therefore, it is of great necessity for translation workers, especially for the beginners to make a research on the translation of long and complex English sentence. The research on this field is not only a theoretical research with strong practical use but also be of great importance to the comparative analysis of words and phrases between Chinese and English in a macro level. It can also enhance translators to make new breakthroughs in their translation career, which may better cultural exchange among countries and bring more accurate masterpiece for the world. Hence, this paper intends to start from the entry point of the characteristics of long complex English sentences, and then do a in-depths analysis on the reason of translating difficulties further, through which the author hopes that the reader can get a clear understanding of the impact on the user’s thinking style made by different language and the difference in phrases and sentence structures of diverse language family. Thus, all the learner learn it and memorized it by heart. In the end, the author is, through her continuous practice and paint experience, willing to conclude a more clear steps and methods of translation. Last but not least, what matters to the ability of translation is rely on the translator’s persistent hardworking. All the translation work lovers should better make further efforts under the instruction of correct theory direction.

On the Chinese-English Translation of Advertising Slogan from the Perspective of Functional Equivalence Theory

Nowadays, advertising slogan has been used by various corporations as an aid to promote their products. As advertising slogan is crisp, concise, and direct, it has been viewed as the identity of a corporation. With the tide of globalization, the translation of slogan is much more important in for the corporation in world economy. This paper introduces the functional equivalence theory, which consists of two points: the receptor’ response and content over form. And the main function of the advertisement is vocative function, evoking the customers’ purchasing desire. At this point, Functional Equivalence Theory is suitable to guide the translation of advertising slogan, for it aims to achieve the equivalent or similar response between the receptors of the source text and those of the target text. What’s more, the application of this theory in Chinese-English translation is also discussed from many different respects base on the specific examples of slogans’ translation. At last, three useful strategies are proposed: literal translation, parody translation and creative translation.

The Theory of Functional Equivalence and Digital Exhaustion An Almost Concurring Opinion to the UsedSoft v. Oracle Decision

It is cliche, but it is a matter of fact at the same time that legislators and rightholders face significant challenges due to the constant development of technology. The history of the internet is colored by hundreds of vital debates that are due to the unauthorized use of copyrighted contents. The principle of exhaustion is neither an exception. The launch of online stores offering used software, sound recordings, audio books or e-books has necessarily raised new questions. The most important one is whether the doctrine of exhaustion that has originally been developed to cover the resale of physical/tangible objects shall be applicable to contents sold in digital format via the internet. The present article aims to introduce a pioneer decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) handed over in the UsedSoft case. The preliminary ruling will be analyzed through four distinct questions, with a special focus on the applicability of the exhaustion or first-sale doctrine in the online world. These questions are related to the licence versus sale dichotomy; the so-called umbrella solution; the "new copy theory", migration of digital copies via the internet, and the forward-and-delete technology; and the issues of lex specialis and the theory of functional equivalence.

Chinese-characterized Terms Translation on the Functional Equivalence Theory

Since the reform and opening-up policy, the whole world has witnessed China’s setting-off. In addition to the economic boom, China also lays stress on strengthening her culture soft power in the outside world. Hence, an increasing number of words with Chinese characteristics have appeared. In regard to the translation of these Chinese-characterized words, lots of translators and scholars have put forward different translating methods. From the perspective of functional equivalence theory, in most cases, due to the differences of cultural background and linguistic customs between Chinese and English, it is impossible to reach total equivalence in form and meaning. On this occasion, the translator can choose a suitable approach to reach the functional equivalence. Through analyzing the translation of Chinese-characterized terms, the author tries to explain these useful methods from the perspective of functional equivalence.