基于奈达功能对等之《小王子》三个中译本比较探究

本文是语言学论文，Under the guidance of Nida's functional equivalence theory, this thesis makes a comparative analysis of the three Chinese translating versions of The Little Prince by Zhou Kexi, Li Jihong and Ai Ke with 24 examples. Of the common grounds of the three versions, they all try to present the image and conciseness of The Little Prince with children's language. They are all welcomed by the children and are easy to understand. Of the three Chinese versions, Zhou's version is the closest and most natural translating version to the original according to the functional equivalence theory, which is widely accepted by most children receptors. Nida's functional equivalence theory includes four aspects: receptors' response, information equivalence,cultural equivalence and stylistic equivalence. Firstly, based on the receptors'response, as The Little Prince is a classic and famous children's literary work with a large number receptors of children, this thesis finds out that Zhou's translating language is the most vivid, natural and simplest of the three versions, which fully embodies the characteristics of children's language. Secondly, based on the informative equivalence, it is found out that Zhou's version uses a lot of translation techniques and methods to express the connotation of the story with simple expressions, making the sentence clear and easy to understand. Thirdly, based on the cultural equivalence, when translating

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Chapter 1 Introduction 

In these years, with the globalization of children's literature, the quality of children's literary works' translation is getting more and more important. At the same time, because the receptors are special, the translational works of children's literature are quite different from the others, which are often ignored in the process of translation. Because of the cognitive ability of childrenand the differences between Chinese and Western cultures, the translation of children's literature is of a great challenge to the translators. This paper states that, we should consider the receptor's identity for children's literature translation so that children can get the same feeling from the translation works as well as the original do, which is from the perspective of functional equivalence theory. Functional equivalence theory was proposed by the famous American translation theorist, Eugene A. Nida. He presents "Translation consists in reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source language message, first in the terms of meaning and secondly in the terms of style" (Nida& Table, 2004:12). Functional equivalence theory is the core of Nida's translation theory. Functional equivalence is not about the equivalence of languages, but the equivalence of language functions and the equivalence of receptors' reaction. Nida points out translators should not focus on the language and structure, but on the meaning and spirit of the original (Nida, 2004). Fairy tales are the bridge for children to open their minds. Through the wonderful plot of the fairy tales, children can think and know more about the world, intuitively recognize the beauty and ugliness, the angel and the evil, as well as the goods and the bads. The Little Prince is a famous short story of children's literature, which is published in 1943, written by Anthony de Saint-Exupery, a writer, poets and pioneer pilot in France in the twentieth century. Although The Little Prince is only a fairy tale, it hides a deep philosophy of life. The little prince is a symbol of the childhood, from whom we can see the most innocent and kind shadow of the childhood from the beginning of the people's life. In the book of The Little Prince, the pilot is the story teller. He tells about the various adventure of The Little Prince, which happened from his own planet to the earth.

Chapter 2 Literature Review 

2.1 A briefing of functional equivalence theory 

Eugene A. Nida is a remarkable translation theorist, linguist and a cultural anthropologist in 1969 (November 11, 1914–August 25, 2011). He was born in the Oklahoma City in the middle and south of the United States in November 11, 1914. He was a Christian in his childhood and was determined to be a missionary. In school, Nida was particularly interested in the language of all subjects. Nida began to learn Latin in the middle school. In the University of California at Los Angeles, he learned foreign language, Greek, Latin, French and German etc. He was a member of the honor society and one of the top students in the history of the school. After he graduatedfrom college, Nida knew Kenneth Pike, a linguist who taught phonetics, and began to study phonetics with him. After completing the 1936 Summer Courses from University of California at Los Angeles, Nida began to participate in intensive courses and continued until 1953. Nida studied the Greek Bible in southern California, and received a master's degree in 1939. In 1941, Nida entered the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor to study his Ph.D., majoring in descriptive linguistics, cultural anthropology, and ancient English. In 1943, he received a Ph.D. in linguistics under the guidance of Locnard Bloomfield, a famous modern structural linguist. He has long served the Translation Department of the American biblical society and the 1968 President of the American Language Association. He wasexcellent at many languages, especially in the field of translation. Chinese translation has been deeply influenced by his theory. Nida was deeplyinfluenced by the American structuralism language school and with years of translationstudies of Bible, he put forward some original views on his theory (Zhao, 2015). Since 1945, Nida has published more than 250 articles, 40 Works, including 11 monographs on translation and linguistics. He is famous for the western academia in the translation study. He wrote some other influential books, including Morphology: The Descriptive Analysis of Words (1949), Toward a Science of Translating (1964), The Theory and Practice of Translation (Charles Taber& Nida, 1969), Componential Analysis of Meaning (1975), Language Structure and Translation: Essays by Eugene A. Nida and ed. by S. Dil and Language and Culture: Contexts in Translating (2001), etc. Of all these representative works, the translation thought that is the best embodiment of Nida's complete and mature translation is the book of Language and Culture: Contexts in Translating(Yang, 2016:25). Over the decades, Nida has made a comprehensive and systematic exploration with its strong language skills and knowledge of translation. He formed a complete and unique translation theory system in the world, and has made a huge impact on Chinese translation studies. Nida is respected as a Changqing scholar. He was still publishing until old age, insisted on research, writing and lecturing or going out to participate in academic meetings. 

2.2 Translation standards of Nida's functional equivalence theory 

The functional equivalence theory of Nida is receptor centered. In his view, the emphasis on translation should not be the form of language, but on the response to receptors to the target text. The reaction should be compared with the response to the original receptor to the original text. Tan Zaixi thinks that in order to judge whether a translation is correct or not, the target of the translation must be measured. Whether the translation is correct or not depends on the extentto which the general receptor can understand the translation correctly. At the same time, what people are concerned with is not only to enable the receptor to understand the translation in general, but also to ensure that he does not have a misunderstanding of the translation. Talking about the correctness of translation from this viewpoint naturally means that there will be more than one kind of translation that can be right (Tan, 1999:16). The target audience of translation is almost always a major factor in determining the process of translation and the level of language use. Not only does the translator have to reflect the stylistic way for the language, but it also has to be adjusted to the level of educational level. This usually needs to make the vocabulary and grammar simpler, as well as some important adjustment for the children. Some excellent translators will imagine that the receptors are listening to the translation or reading the text on the computer screen. In this way, the translated text is prepared for the person to hear or read, but not just a process that tries to match words and syntax (Nida, 2001). From the beginning to the end, Nida pays attention to the study of the receptor's factors. Because of the cultural context and the linguistic context of the original receptors is consistent with the original creator, the original receptors in reading the text is very natural, and will not be touching the awkward syntax or lexical and strange cultural barriers. However, when the original text is translated into an acceptable language, the translation of the target receptor is much less natural than that of the original receptor. In order to make the receptors read the translation as much natural and smooth as the original, Nida stressed thattranslation should make some adjustments from the aspects of grammar and vocabularies, cultural context and linguistic context language to adapt and make receptors better understand and accept. At the same time, in order to better adapt the translation to the receptors and achieve a generally consistent functional equivalence, Nida also studies the type of receptors.

Chapter 3 Theoretical Analysis Framework........................ 23 

3.1 Receptors' response analysis................................. 23 

3.2 Informative equivalence analysis .......................... 24 

3.3 Cultural equivalence analysis............................... 24 

3.4 Stylistic equivalence analysis................................ 25 

Chapter 4 Translation Strategies of the Three Chinese Versions ...................................... 27 

4.1 Discussion of the common grounds of the three Chinese versions .............................. 27 

4.2 Translation strategies analysis ............................... 28 

Chapter 5 Conclusion ................ 52 

Chapter 4 Translation Strategies of the Three Chinese Versions 

4.1 Discussion of the common grounds of the three Chinese versions 

This thesis analyzed the three Chinese version of The Little Prince. It is a famous children's literature and full of the eulogized of truth, goodness and beauty. The novel was loved by the children all over the world. There are a great many different versions of The Little Prince in Chinese. Though many excellent translators have translated, there are still some areas for improvement. In this thesis, three famous translation versions of Zhou Kexi, Li Jihong and Ai Ke are taken to a comparison from the perspective of functional equivalence. Through the comparison and analysis of the three versions, the advantages and some limitations will be found out. For the common grounds of translations of Zhou Kexi, Li Jihong and Ai ke, they all try to present the image and conciseness of The Little Prince as the language of children's literature. The language is simple, concise, beautiful, healthy and pure, and roughly matches the original meaning of the original and achieves style equivalence. The three versions are popular with children and easy to understand. In the view that the equivalence of functional equivalence is not absolute equivalence, there are differences in degree. Therefore, the three translation texts have certain differences and comparability, which is a good sample of the research. 

4.2 Translation strategies analysis 

This sentence comes from the end of The Little Prince's preface. From the translation of Zhou Kexi, he translates the author's dedication to "还是孩子时的这个大人' 还是小男孩的莱翁•维尔特", so we can assume the potential receptors from the view point of Zhou Kexi are both children and the adults From the translation of Li Jihong, he translated the author's dedication to"这个大人从前当过的那个孩子", "献给小时候的里翁•沃斯", we can see that the receptors of Li Jihong mostly point to thechildren. From the translation of Ai Ke, he translated the author's dedication to"献给小时候的他", "献给小时候的里昂•维德", we can see the receptors of Ai Ke are children. In Zhou's version, he emphasizes to dedicate to "大人" while in Li's version, he stresses to dedicate to "孩子". As a child, when I read the preface of The Little Prince, the firstreaction may be attracted by the version of Li. Because I'm the object of being told, theauthor cares about the receptor's reaction. In addition, "reproducing the message" is another important aspect of receptors' response. For example, In Zhou's version, he translates "还是小男孩的莱翁•维尔特" into "to Leon Werth, when he was a little boy". Compared with Li's and Ai's version, Zhou's version is basically using the way of literal translation.However,translating "when he was a little boy" into "小时候" is better for the children to read. From suchperspective, we can tell the potential receptors from the three Chinese versions are different. Thus it will make different strategies during the translation according to the receptors' response in the functional equivalence. 

Chapter 5 Conclusion 

The Little Prince, particular attention should be paid to the differences between Chinese and English, ecological, material, social, religious and linguistic culture, etc. Among the three translating versions, Zhou's version could consciously adjust the sentence structure and fully achieve the natural presentation of the target language of thecultural equivalence. Last but not least, based on the stylistic equivalence, Zhou's versionachieves to display the vivid and colloquial features of the original text in many aspects, such as grammar rules, expression habits, vivid description, complex and fickle sentence patterns, etc. Therefore, Zhou's version is the most natural and closest to the source message from the four perspectives and achieves the equivalence of translation at the maximum degree. On the whole, Nida's functional equivalence is still a treasure trove of the translation of children's literature and western translation thoughts. With the growth of social communication, children's literature will be paid more and more attention to.The theory of functional equivalence is expected to beapplied to various literary translations and gets further improvement. 
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