Introduction of Functionalism and Functional Translation Theory

Abstract

From ancient times till now, there have been abundant findings from translation research in China, for instance, Yan Fu's "faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance", Lu Xun's "Rather be faithful than smooth". The Chinese translation theories in the last century laid too much emphasis on literary translation. Textual features of pragmatic texts are greatly different from those of literary texts. As old translation theories do not suit the development of informative text translation, a new and effective theoretical tool-functional translation theory has attracted our attention in our search for an aid to explore the nature and special characteristics of pragmatic texts translation. Therefore, studying text translation in the light of functional translation theory should be of great help to translation practice. "Functionalism" means focusing on the function of texts and translation. Functionalism is a broad term for various theories that approach translation in this way. This thesis discusses the historic background and development of functional translation theory and some basic theories or concepts from functional translation theory, such as the Skopos theory, Nida's functional equivalence and Text typology and further explores their characteristics and significance to pragmatic translation.