In the stage of descriptive linguistics, Nida's translation theory is mainly based on linguistics, and carries out translation research at syntactic and lexical levels; In the communicative stage, Nida founded the communicative school of translation studies and put forward that "translation is a science"; In the semiotic stage, Nida put forward that language, society and culture are interrelated and inseparable on the basis of social semiotics, and the ultimate goal of translation is to make the target readers get the same feelings from the translation as the original readers get from the original. Nida's most famous theory is "dynamic equivalence", that is, "functional equivalence".
Functional equivalence theory
1964, Nida put forward "dynamic equivalence" for the first time in his book Exploration of Translation Science. He believes that "in dynamic equivalence, the translator is not concerned with the one-to-one correspondence between source information and target information, but with a dynamic relationship, that is, the relationship between target language recipients and target language should be basically the same as that between source language recipients and original information." Subsequently, because the meaning of the word "dynamic" is vague, it is easy to cause misunderstanding. 1986 Nida changed the concept of "dynamic equivalence" to "functional equivalence" in his book from one language to another.
The traditional translation theory focuses on the debate between "literal translation" and "free translation", which are concrete problems raised in translation practice. Nida, on the other hand, focuses on the functional use of translation, emphasizing that translation should be combined with language and cultural background. His theory breaks the shackles caused by the differences in form and structure between different languages, emphasizes the communicative function of translation, makes translation serve the readers of the translation, and takes whether the translation can be understood by the readers as the evaluation criterion of the translation.
1) get rid of the traditional part-of-speech bondage
When it comes to parts of speech, a set of ingrained grammatical rules emerges in our minds. We are familiar with these grammar rules and have a good command of them. Influenced by English grammatical structure, some people will translate "She are ablely assisted" as "she has been helped with all her strength", because "able" is an adverb that modifies the verb "assist". Her sweet face attracted everyone's attention. Her sweet face attracted everyone's attention. There are countless such examples, and English language learners dare not violate grammar rules. However, in the actual translation process, whether we should strictly abide by the rules of grammar or break through the shackles of these rules depends on the specific situation, and learning to be flexible is the true meaning of translation. So, if the context permits, would it be more appropriate to translate her into "She has been greatly helped" and her sweet face into "She looks sweet and attracts everyone's attention"? This also provides a basis for our commonly used part-of-speech conversion methods.
2) Using core sentences and sentence transformation to overcome syntactic obstacles.
Nida believes that an experienced translator can often break down complex sentence patterns in the source language into simple sentences that are easy to understand in the target language. Nida quoted the concepts of surface structure and deep structure in early transformational generative grammar, but did not copy them completely, but quoted the concept of core sentence. For example, there are some serious things I want to tell my students. They are standing at the narrow entrance to the playground under maintenance. The structure of this sentence is typical. The syntactic structure of English is completely different from that of Chinese, but as long as this complex sentence is simplified into several core sentences or sentences similar to core sentences, it will be more easily accepted by readers.
(1) There is something serious.
I want to talk to my students (something serious).
(3) My students are standing at the narrow entrance.
(4) The entrance is narrow.
(5) The narrow entrance leads to the playground under maintenance.
After the long sentence above is broken down into five core simple sentences, it becomes a sentence pattern that most people can accept and understand. People often have no difficulty in communicating with each other in core sentences. Nida believes that a mature translator often breaks down a complex sentence into simple core sentences in his mind when transmitting the original information. Then it comes to the step of reorganizing sentences, and the translator naturally associates these core sentences with the syntactic features of the target language.
The second flaw
1) There is no standard for the same response with different audiences.
Reader response theory is the core idea of Nida's "functional equivalence" theory, which holds that one of the important methods to evaluate a translation is the target reader's reaction to the information expressed by the original author after reading the original text. And compared with the readers of the source language, the response is consistent. The reader response theory is mainly put forward for Bible translation, aiming at spreading Christianity. Its audience mainly comes from some backward areas such as Africa and Asia, and the scope is small. Therefore, it is necessary and achievable to expect readers of the Bible translation to have the same reaction as readers of the original text. However, in general, the target audience of the translation is very large, and their concepts and cultural backgrounds are different, so it is unrealistic for such a large group to respond to the translation. Moreover, what kind of reaction should "identity" be based on? These are all urgent problems in Nida's functional equivalence theory.
2) Pay attention to the meaning transformation in translation.
Nida defines translation as: firstly, in terms of meaning, secondly, in terms of style, the closest natural equivalence of the source language information is reproduced in the target language. As can be seen from this definition, Nida believes that the meaning of the original text should be reproduced first, followed by the form. Generally speaking, the channel acceptance of the target readers will be much lower than that of the original readers. This is especially true if the source language and the target language belong to different language families and cultures. Translation links information in different languages and reproduces information in another language. Because different languages have different grammatical systems, cultural backgrounds and expression habits, in order to convey the complete meaning of the original text and make the readers of the translated text react the same as the readers of the original text, they have to give up formal equivalence and explain the information clearly. For the text that conveys information, this translation strategy has little influence, but for poems, lyrics and other styles that emphasize formal beauty, if we do not pay attention to formal equivalence, we will lose the artistic conception and aesthetic feeling contained in the original text.