Eugene Nida’s “Functional Equivalence” and Harmonious Space of Eco-translation: Differences and Similarities

The core idea of "functional equivalence" in translation was developed by Eugene Nida and as a representative figure of western communication theory school, his thoughts have had a profound influence on the process of world translatology.Language is an ecosystem, and translation is at least a process of interaction between the two ecosystems of source language and target language.Kushnina constructs a harmonious translation model from the perspective of language ecology, and regards translation as having different explicit and implicit language or speech transformations in the form of a collaborative system.Comparing and analyzing the differences and common directions of the two theories, this paper analyzes whether the latter can fill the limitations of the former in terms of functional equivalence, and presents a harmonious trend of translation effects.Ecological interpretation of classical translation theories can help to narrow the theoretical defects and broaden the scope of translation theory research.