Abstract

Since Leaves of Grass was recommended to Chinese in the period of the May Fourth New Literature Revolution, it had significant influences on Chinese new literature, especially on poetry creation. Whitman's style can be found in a lot of Chinese literary works. Due to the historical reasons, the early translators may not have a clear concept of the theory of “functional equivalence”, so their translation came from personal understanding. Whether their translations are in line with the theory of “functional equivalence”? How about the literary effects of their translations? The thesis will discuss the questions above in detail.

This thesis employs Nida's theory of “functional equivalence” as theoretical foundation and mainly focuses on a comparative study of two famous Chinese versions translated by Chu Tunan and Zhao Luorui. It adopts content analysis as research methods. As their translations are different, this study employs the theory of “functional equivalence” to compare the characteristics of two versions. The thesis is organized as follows, the second part of the thesis focuses on introducing the Leaves of Grass and its Chinese translations, including its author, the introductions of two translators, Chinese versions of Leaves of Grass which are translated by Chu Tunan and Zhao Luorui and the procession of the translating. The third part focuses on a comparative study of the two Chinese versions, which is the key point in this paper. In this chapter, the author compares different Leaves of Grass translation versions, and studies their translation features through the theory of “functional equivalence”. The chapter focuses on the translation of words, the scene description and rhetorical devices. The fourth part is the last chapter of the thesis. In this chapter, the author concludes the full thesis, explains some limitations of the thesis and gives some future research directions.

The result of this thesis will be a supplement to comparative studies of Chinese versions of Leaves of Grass and be able to provide some reference for the practical application of
the theory of “functional equivalence”.

Key words: Leaves of Grass, translation, “functional equivalence”, comparative study