论文总字数：31772字

摘 要

随着社会发展，进口食品在人民生活中愈发重要，而进口食品广告又在进口食品的推广中起到了决定性的作用。因此，进口食品广告的翻译不容忽视。尽管之前有许多学者研究英语广告翻译，但较少从功能对等的理论角度出发对进口食品翻译进行具体研究。

本文会重点介绍奈达的功能对等理论的四个原则（词汇对等、句法对等、篇章对等和文体对等），并探究将理论运用到实践中的具体方法，希望能借此对进口食品广告翻译事业有所帮助。

关键词：功能对等，进口食品，广告

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 2

3. Functional Equivalence Theory 3

3.1 The development of functional equivalence 3

3.2 The explanation of functional equivalence 4

3.3 The four levels of functional equivalence 5

4. How to Apply the Functional Equivalence Theory to Practice 6

4.1 From the perspective of Lexical Equivalence 6

4.2 From the perspective of Sentence Equivalence 8

4.3 From the perspective of Passage Equivalence 9

4.4 From the perspective of Style Equivalence 11

5. Conclusion 13

Works Cited 15

1. Introduction

Functional Equivalence, proposed by Eugene A.Nida, has been researched in many areas in recent years. Some have analyzed its profound influence and its meaning to the whole translation field. A few defects have been pointed out, too. And some applied it to practice like movies or literature, business English translation or medical English translation. However, few scholars utilize it to research import food advertisements.

Nowadays the advertisements are apt to be the crux of the sale, and they exert considerable influence on the human life. First of all, it has much bearing on consumers’ purchase intention. For instance, Burger King launched the famous advertisement “Have it your way”, which became one of the classic advertisements during the Advertising Age. Owing to this advertisement, the company defeated MacDonald in all areas in 1996. (Hu 72) Likewise in China, Guangdong robust group launched the advertisement of “purification by 27 times”, which made it a place in the competitive drinking water market. Advertisements also reduces the cost of distribution and eases the task of personal selling, as an educator to help audience receive new things. It is an indispensable fact in our life.

The advertisement is significant to the products, and so is to import food. The Engel"s coefficient of our country in 2016 was 30.1%, which was still the dominant cost of total consumption. It revealed that food was still the most important issue citizens care. However, food safety issues erode our confidence towards domestic food. And with more than 50 billion dollars amount of food imports in 2016 and the generation influenced by the western countries deeply, American Food Industry Association foresaw that china would become the largest food imports country by 2018. As an important part of the propaganda of import food, import food advertisements could help the audience understand the characteristics and advantages of import food. And only by proper translation could the audience get accurate import food information. So applying functional equivalence theory to the translation of advertisement of import food can not only enrich the research in this field, but also can have a considerable impact on the citizens’ life, with full of practical significance.

All of this demonstrated the significance of the translation of import food advertisement. And this article will analyze the translation of import food advertisement from the Perspective of the Functional Equivalence for reference, which may do translators a little favor in the area of the translation of import food advertisements.

2. Literature Review

Researches related are not a few. There are lots of studies related to the English advertisement translation like 3000 Sentences in Advertising English（1993） by Cui Gang and A Survey of Domestic Advertising Translation Studies(2005) by Li Zhen and Ma Caimei. These studies all introduce lots of English advertisements.(Liamp;Ma 21) The authors also analyze the translation of these advertisements in detail. These books give scholars a good source of English advertisements, which can do them a favor when scholars research. But they mostly put the point at introducing these advertisements, not researching them deeply, let alone research them from the perspective of functional equivalence theory. And these studies are usually comprehensive, instead of focusing on import food. And their translations of advertisements sometimes are not accurate.

Theory and Practice of Advertising Translation (2010) by Li Kexing put forward the meaning of the word or formal equivalence is not very important. The translators should express the meaning of source language accurately.(Li 121) This idea conforms to functional theory, precisely, the lexical equivalence. The book mainly analyzed diverse advertisements from the angle of rhetoric. The book by Li Kexing guides translators in the area of advertisement translation, but he didn’t apply any concrete theory to the advertisement translation. It is a good guider for amateur translators, but not suitable for scholars to research.

Monographs about functional equivalence theory like Newly Edited Nida on Translation (1999) by Tan Zaixi explain the development of the functional equivalence and its content explicitly.(Tan 61) They analyze Eugene A.Nida’s books and papers attentively, making his theory more acceptable to people. However, practical application can’t be seen in their researches which are full of theory analysis and comment. They haven’t put forward some practical issues to put the theory into practice, not to mention the import food advertisements.

Rao Fan analyzed the characters of the advertisement of food and the translation of it in Characteristics and Translation of Food Advertising Language. He finally concluded that advertisement of food should be translated in consideration of the language, the syntactical structure, rhetoric, combined with both literal translation and free translation to attract the costumers. Rao Fan found some characters about the English advertisements and proposed some concrete methods to cope with them.(Rao 115) But Rao didn’t apply the functional equivalence theory to research it, nor did he attached emphasis on import food advertisement and its weight to our society.

Chen Juan revealed that functional equivalence theory can’t embrace everything in the study of advertisement translation in her paper “Functional Equivalence in Translating Products Advertisements”. And she wished more insights would be generated. Chen Juan generalized some approaches to translate the advertisements from the perspective of functional equivalence theory. She pointed out that translators should pay attention to the different cultures between two countries.(Chen 36) Some of her viewpoints are constructive, nevertheless, she didn’t mention the translation of import food advertisement and its importance to consumers. Neither did she mention the four levels of the functional equivalence theory.

3. Functional Equivalence Theory

3.1 The development of functional equivalence

Functional equivalence theory was first proposed by Eugene A.Nida, a pioneer in the fields of translation theory and linguistics, in 1964 in his Toward a Science of Translating. However, at the very beginning, it was not called “Functional Equivalence” but “dynamic equivalence” when Nida translated the Bible as a prestigious Bible translator. (Nida Science 56) In 1993, Eugene A.Nida made it functional equivalence. Some articles said that dynamic theory was just as same as functional theory except the name. That’s not true. There are some differences between them. Nida defined his dynamic theory that:

“Dynamic equivalence is therefore to be defined in terms of the degree to which the receptors of the message in the receptor language respond to it in substantially the same manner as the receptors in the source language. This response can never be identical, for the cultural and historical settings are too different, but there should be a high degree of equivalence of response, or the translation will have failed to accomplish its purpose.”(Nidaamp;Taber Theory 12)

Nida believed that the dynamic equivalence proposed by himself emphasized that the equivalence of the content of the source text and its translation is superior to that of the form, which was easily misunderstood that the content and the form are contradictory.

In order to avoid the misunderstanding, he adopted the term “functional equivalence”, aiming at highlighting the communicative function of translation. Functional equivalence requires that the translation and the source text be not only equal in content, but also in form as far as possible. In contrast, functional equivalence is more persuasive than dynamic equivalence.

3.2 The explanation of functional equivalence

So Nida"s dynamic equivalence theory is opposite to the views of philologists. The philologists hold that assessing the inter-animation of words on the page can lead to the understanding of the source text (ST), and that meaning is self-contained within the text. Functional equivalence has been seen as a fundamental theory to deal with the sense-for-sense translation (translating the meanings of phrases or whole sentences) and word-for-word translation (translating the meanings of words and phrases in a more literal method). The term "functional equivalence" suggests not just that the equivalence is between the function of the source text in the source culture and the function of the target text (translation) in the target culture, but that "function" can be thought of as a property of the text. It is possible to associate functional equivalence with how people interact in cultures.

3.3 The four levels of functional equivalence

Nida also divided functional equivalence into four levels called Lexical Equivalence, Sentence Equivalence, Passage Equivalence and Style Equivalence.

（1）Lexical equivalence

The lexical equivalence means that a word’s usage in a language decides its meaning. It puzzled translators in the process of translation that how to find the equivalent in the other language. It contains word equivalence, multi-word synonyms, polysemy, equivalents interwoven with one another and word inequivalence. Though there are no exactly identical words among two languages, translators can use different words to express the same meaning.

（2）Sentence equivalence

English grammar is very different from that of Chinese. For example, attributive postposition is hardly seen in Chinese, while in English, it is very usual. Different grammar rules coerce translators into converting the syntactical structure when translating to make the language conform to the expression custom of domestic country.

（3）Passage equivalence

Passage equivalence means language exposes different meanings and functions in different context. It requires translators to translate the passage in the context. To achieve this level, Translators must both have a deep understanding of Chinese and English culture and be careful about its background.

（4）Style equivalence

Last but not the least, the style of the passage can’t be ignored because a style was also an essential part of a text. The style equivalence required the translation must have the same style of its original text. For example, the original text rhyming, the translation must rhyme too. This equivalence demanded heavily as translators must be able to write bilingually with grace.

Formal is thought less important than meaning in his theory because the meaning of source language may be covered up if translators excessively pursue the formal. Consequently, culture exchange was curbed

Functional Equivalence exerts a considerable influence on translation. Not only does it symbolize a breakthrough of translation theory, but also acts as a classic translation theory itself. It is an excellent theory that deserves scholars researching.

4. How to Apply the Functional Equivalence Theory to Practice

Functional equivalence theory has been introduced basically and readers may know it well. However, empty talk matters nothing. So this paper will put forward the way to solve practical problems from the perspective of functional equivalence, mainly the four levels of it.

4.1 From the perspective of Lexical Equivalence

Example 1

Now you can have your cake and diet too.

现在你可以一面吃甜食一面减肥。(Cui 2)

Mr. Kipling makes exceedingly good cakes.

Mr. Kipling烤制出绝好的蛋糕。(Cui 34)

The same word “cake” was translated to different words in the two sentences. In the first sentence, “have your cake” is the opposite of “diet”. This advertisement tries to ensure consumers that with its product, they will never worry about being fat even if they eat high calorie food like cakes. And if translators translate it to a special sweet food, Chinese will be puzzled that whether it means with this product, eating other high calorie food like ice cream not cake will still make you fat. In the second sentence, cakes are the products of the Mr. Kipling. And if translators translate it like the first one, the Chinese customers will also be puzzled because there are lots of kinds of desserts in the world and they don’t know what Mr. Kipling sells.

Example 2

She’s the nimblest girl around. Nimble is the way she goes. Nimble is the bread she eats. Light, delicious, Nimble.

她是周围最轻捷聪慧的女子。轻捷是她的举止特点。Nimble是她食用的面包，松软可口，Nimble。(Cui 37)

When “nimble” is used as an adjective, it means “smart or move their fingers, hands, or legs quickly and easily”. And in this sentence, Nimble was also a brand of bread. So translators translated the same “nimble” into different meanings. This translation was not so good. The first “nimble” should be an adjective that means “smart” to express the girl is the smartest girl around. The second “nimble” should be such. And the third should be Nimble bread in Chinese to make the advertisement clear.

Example 3

All you need is some good company, good coffee and vivid imagination. Let’s take care of the coffee. Only taster choice is good enough.

你所需要的无非是好的伴侣、好的咖啡和丰富的想象力。让我们关心这种咖啡。只有Taster才是唯一正确的选择。(Cui 2)

In this advertisement, “Taster” is not only a coffee brand, but also a noun means “epicure”. So When translators translate it, they should use a word that has both the meanings. It is very hard to achieve it, so maybe holding the “Taster” is a right choice for “Taster” was not a very hard word for Chinese, and many of them could know its two meanings.

Example 4

What could be delisher than fisher?

有什么比fisher更美味的呢？(Cui 2)

Translators can’t find the “delisher” in our dictionary. But people who have learned English know that it is the same meaning of “delicious”. The advertisement changed it for making it and “fisher” rhyme to stress its product “fisher”. It is a wonderful idea that must pleasantly surprise consumers. But in translation area, it’s hard to handle. Because translators can’t find the same word like “delisher” in Chinese. Translated like above, the advertisement loses its original charm. But if translators really can’t find the word to replace the “delisher”, translating it just as above is ok because it has expressed the meaning of the advertisement.

Just as the lexical equivalence saying, the word’s usage in a language decides its meaning and translators can’t use one translation of one word forever. In practice, it requires translators to try to express the same meaning of the original language, not the same meaning of the word. If translators can’t achieve it any more, they have to abandon the formal equivalence as Nida said. First of all, the meaning should be expressed clearly.

4.2 From the perspective of Sentence Equivalence

Example 5

Fresh-up with Seven-up.(Seven-up)

提神醒脑，喝七喜。(Cui 96)

The original English advertisement was just a noun phrase. But the Chinese translation has three verb-object structures. It’s totally the non-equivalence in Chinese and English. If translators translate the sentence literally, Chinese readers will be puzzled because they don’t know what’s the relationship between the two things. Even consumers know the sentence, they will find it illogical. Based on the sentence equivalence, translators usually change the sequence of the words like “七喜，清凉透心” or add a verb like the translation above.

Example 6

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