Abstract

Wild Grass, written by Lu Xun, marks the maturity of Chinese prose poetry and opens the way for symbolism in modern literature. Not only does this collection reflect the social condition in the 1920s, but also it presents author’s thought and heckling to revolution. Color words are widely used in Wild Grass to describe the feature of symbolic objects and intensify emotions. This paper based on the English version translated by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang, makes an analysis on the translation of color words according to the functional equivalence theory and puts forward measures to improve current translation against existing shortages.

Key Words: Wild Grass, color words, the functional equivalence theory

Contents

Abstract

中文摘要

1-Introduction-1

2-An analysis from perspective of the functional equivalence theory-2

2.1-A Brief introduction to the functional equivalence theory-2

2.2-Color words in literary works-4

2.3-The translation of “blue” according to the literal translation-5

2.4-Different translations of color words according to the free translation-6

2.4.1-The translation of “Red” according to the free translation-6

2.4.2-The translation of “White” according to the free translation-7

2.4.3-The translation of “Green” according to the free translation-9

3-Shortages of the translations of color words according to the functional equivalence theory-9

3.1-The semantic loss due to the cultural differences-9

3.2-The misunderstanding due to the individual differences-10

4-Measures to improve the current translation-10

4.1-Giving priority to the free translation-10

4.2-Understanding of the Transformational-Generative Grammar-11

4.3-Translating and inspecting texts with dialectical thinking-12

5-Conclusion-12

References-14