Abstract

O. Henry is a famous American short story writer. Most of his works show profound humanitarian care through presenting the ordinary life of American society. Last Leaf is one of the master pieces of O. Henry’s. Last Leaf presents virtues of ordinary people to the readers. As different translators have translated Last Leaf into Chinese, Chinese readers may as well appreciate this short story and have a chance to worry about Johnsy’s life, to praise what Sue has done for friendship and to experience the shock given by old Behrman.

Functional equivalence is put forward by Eugene A. Nida. It was born in Nida’s practice of Bible translation. Functional equivalence does not aim at producing equivalence in language style, but in language functions of source language and target language. This theory has influenced many translators on their translation practices. It shifts the focus of translation to reader’s responses, and it emphasizes that a natural translation should allow target readers to have responses basically the same as source readers. A translation work is good or bad was once judged from its translation text only, while Nida’s functional equivalence theory allows readers of the translation text to be the judge.

Wen Meihui, Wang Yongnian, Huang Yuanshen and Niu Zhenhua have translated Last Leaf into Chinese respectively. This paper will analyze and compare four Chinese versions of Last Leaf under the theory of functional equivalence, and try to find out the translation strategies from three aspects, which are meaning, style and culture.

Key words: functional equivalence, Last leaf, translation strategy, meaning, style, culture