Chapter Five  Attempts to further amend Nida’s translation theory
5.1 The application of Nida’s theory to literary translation
understandable
    The significance or the validity of Nida’s theory: 1) the application of “dynamic equivalence”, 2) the significance of the concept of the decoder’s channel capacity, and 3) the important role of receptors play in evaluating literary translation.
5.1.1 The application of Dynamic equivalence
    The principle of “dynamic equivalence”, which is defined as “the closest natural equivalent to the source-language message”, points out two ways to achieve the goal of “equivalent effect”: 1) the closest equivalent, 2) the natural equivalent.
    By “the closest equivalent”, Nida means a rendering that has the highest degree of approximation to the original text.
    “Natural equivalent” refers to a “stylistically acceptable rendering”, about which a bilingual and bicultural person might say “That is just the way we would say it”.
    A natural translation has no trace of awkwardness or strangeness in its grammatical and stylistic forms. The principle of “natural equivalent” helps the translator consciously avoid “translationese” in their work, and improves the quality of literary translation.
    A natural expression “tries to relate the receptor to modes of behavior relevant within the context of his own culture”, and it “does not insist that he understand the cultural patterns of the source-language context in order to comprehend the message”.
    Following the principle of “naturalness”, the translator is entitled to make certain cultural adaptations to make the monolingual reader understand the translated message with ease.
5.1.2 The significance of the concept of the decoder’s channel capacity
    Nida borrows the concept of the decoder’s channel capacity from information theory to explain why good translations tend to be longer than the original text.
    In his view, any well-constructed text is designed to fit the channel capacity of the inten
ded reader. However, the channel capacity of the average reader in the receptor language is much narrower than that of the reader in the source language. In order that the translated message fits the channel capacity of the receptor language reader, the translator is obliged to make implicit information in the original text explicit in the translated text. Only by doing so can the translators ensure the realization of the objective of equivalent effect.
5.1.3 The important role receptors play in evaluating literary translation
By examining the response of the reader, for whom a translation is intended, we can make a more objective judgment of literary translation.
5.2 The limitation of Nida’s theory in literary translation
    His definition of translating seems to have put equal emphasis upon transference of meaning and that style. But his discussions of style are not adequate for literary translation,
It is generally agreed that literary translation should not only convey accurately the sense of the original text, but also reproduce appropriately the style if the translator wants to attain “equivalent effect”. But in Nida’s theory, the focus is on transference of meaning instead of transference of style.
When discussing the first stage of translating process, Nida adopts various techniques of modern semantics to deal with meanings but makes no mention of style.
In the second stage of “transferring”, Nida shows a complete disregard for style.
In the third stage of “restructuring”, style is treated in a broad sense, referring to varieties of language.
According to Nida, features of style are classified into “formal features” and “lexical features”, and functions of style into “efficiency” and “special effect”.
“Formal features” are arrangement of words, and “lexical features” are words or lexical units.
                  Formal                Lexical
Efficiency            A                    C
Special effects        B                    D
The style in Nida’s theory is mainly related to “efficiency” of a text in terms of both lexical features and formal features.
Since Nida mainly provides guidelines for the popular translation of the Bible (also called the common-language version”), it is understandable that his discussion of style is predetermined by the purpose of making the Word of God acceptable to the average reader. His immediate concern with Bible translation for evangelism prompts him to place his focus on the functional approach to style on the part of receptors.

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