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Nida is a translation theorist who believes that what one language express and convey can also be said in another language, although there are differences and discrepancies between them existing. If a piece of news is written in English, then it can also be clarified in Chinese although it may have to make some necessary changes to achieve the same effect.
As is known that the main point of his theory is to achieve the same effect between the source text readers and the target text readers, we can get a good understanding of the central idea and the ultimate purpose of his functional equivalence. Although English readers and Chinese readers may not achieve the same effects by way of translation, the receptors will understand the idea approximately, as the main differences between languages do not lie in what they can say, but in what ways in which they say it. And also, “but at least ninety percent of the fundamental structures of all languages are quite similar, and language universals far outweigh the pergences” (Nida, 1993:106) clearly shows his functional equivalence of translation theory.
What English sports news and Chinese sports news have in common is the choice of words in use, since they are not usually expressed with refined words or excessive popular words, and they only expect readers grasp the main idea of the information of translation from English into Chinese, Nida’s functional equivalence theory is to achieve the best and appropriate equivalence between two different languages. Therefore, it is applicable to the translation from English sports news into Chinese sports news.
3 Application of Equivalence Theory to Translation of English Sports News
As for news, the headline is the face of a piece of news. In a way, whether it is attractive will depend on if the readers continue to pay attention on the news or not. The inappropriate translation of the sports news headline may make readers misunderstand and even make the news lose readers, or even may cast a bad influence on the transmission of sports culture. The translation from English sports news headline is crucial and even may decide the fate of the news. Therefore, right and appropriate translation of sports news headline is rather important for the whole news.
3.1 Translating of Headlines
Nida’s functional equivalence translation theory is applied in a very wide way in the sports news translator’s mind during the whole translating process. In a general way, they all try to achieve the equivalent effect between two target language readers and make them understand the news in the same way to the maximum extent. Being brief and concise is the common features of both English and Chinese sports news and literal translation is the most common method, however sometimes concerning the background of some famous person or event involved, free translation of news headline is necessary.
A piece of news headline on UEFA.com says: Man United Stretch lead. This headline is quite simple from word use and grammatical structure, so it can be translated literally without any change in order or meaning. ”曼联队继续领先” is an ideal translation. This translation is a good example of either formal equivalence or functional equivalence. Generally speaking, the simple and easy headlines like this one are much easier to find their natural and closest equivalence between different languages. “Olympics Begin in style; Swimmer Takes 1st Gold” is another example of this kind, and this headline can be literally translated to “奥运大开幕，泳将夺取首金” as an model of both formal and content equivalence.
The above translation have achieved equivalence in literal way, but not all the headlines are as simple as the two examples I list above, and most of the English sports news headlines have their own characteristics and even under some certain background. It will be difficult for any translator to translate any English sports news headlines just in the literal way to achieve the same effect. There are so many untraditional headlines from the grammatical perspective or rhetoric devices used in the English headlines, so the free way of translation is needed.