On the Over-translation and Under-translation in The Garlic Ballads under the Functional Translation Theory文献综述

 2022-09-09 15:59:56

On the Over-translation and Under-translation in The Garlic Ballads in the Perspective of Functional Translation Theory

Abstract: This literature review collects results and achievements of former researches and studies concerned with over-translations and under-translations, serving as the theoretical basis of the thesis On the Over-translation and Under-translation in The Garlic Ballads in the Perspective of Functional Translation Theory. It is made up of three parts with an index supplemented at the end of the literature review: functional translation theory, literature review of studies on over-translation and under-translation, and literature review of studies on the works of Mo Yan from the perspective of translation.

Key words: over-translation; under-translation; Mo Yan; Howard Goldblatt

  1. Literature Review

The research studies over-translations and under-translations in the English translation of Mo Yanrsquo;s novel The Garlic Ballads which is translated by the American translator Howard Goldblatt in the perspective of the functional translation theory.

1. 1 About functional translation theory

Eugene A. Nide observes that there is a dynamic orientation when thinking about translational equivalence. In Basics of Translation Studies (2007), his functional equivalence is summarized as follows: by dynamic equivalence, “the relationship between translation and target-language recipients should correspond, roughly, to the relationship between the source text and the source-language recipients.”(p. 58) Whether a translator achieves dynamic equivalence or not is assessed by four criteria: lexical equivalence, syntactical equivalence, semantic equivalence, and stylistic equivalence.

However, among these four equivalence, the semantic one is of the most importance and therefore great priority. Nida himself, in his monograph On Translation (1984), has admitted that “no two words in any two languages ever seem to have precisely the same meanings”(p. 51), that the ways in which language organize words into syntactic structures are “diverse”(p. 51), and that different rhetorical features seem to be “perplexing complications”(p. 51). Therefore, it is unrealistic to pursue an entire equivalence between target and source texts in lexicon, syntactic structures or writing or spoken styles.

Besides, Nida maintains that “the fact that languages may employ quite different forms to express essentially the same meaning is almost a truism”(p. 53), and that “there are, of course, serious problems in translating when the form in which something is said carries considerable meaning”(p.53). What Nide insists is the importance of the expression of meaning rather than the presentation of forms. Therefore, to maintain the semantic equivalence is of essential importance to translators.

1. 2 Literature review of studies on over-translation and under-translation

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