Oscar Wilde, an Ireland writer, is one of the most important writers in the 19th century, whose works occupy a significant position in world of literature. He is also the representative of aestheticism. During his lifetime, Oscar Wilde has created large amount of works, including poems, fictions and dramas and he has made remarkable achievements in all of these fields. His fairy tales don’t take a large part in his works, only two collections—The Happy Prince and Other Tales and A House of Pomegranates, but as a vital sign of his own style, the creation of fairy tales plays an important role in his writing career and fairy tales are always regarded as the most ideal carrier of his aestheticism theory. His fairy tales always enjoy the perfect literary form, rhetorical top-dressing and profound theme. Both his two fairy tales collections are translated into many other languages, and among all his stories, The Nightingale and the Rose, as one of the most popular stories, has been discussed for a long time by many scholars. Since the beginning of the last century, many of Chinese scholars have tried to translate Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales into Chinese. And the two Chinese versions translated by Ba Jin and Lin Huiyin are accepted by most of people, in which Ba Jin and Lin Huiyin used different translation methods to make this romantic story exposed to Chinese people.

In this thesis, the author will do comparative research on these two Chinese versions from perspective of Nida’s functional equivalence theory.

1.2 Significance of the research

 The object of this research is to make a comparative study on the Ba Jin ’s and Lin Huiyin’s Chinese versions of The Nightingale and The Rose from the perspective of functional equivalence which is put forward by Eugene Nida. It attempts to find out and analyze the differences of the translation methods used in The Nightingale and The Rose. This study tries to figure out how these two Chinese versions achieve functional equivalence in terms of the sentence level mainly through the comparative study. It also tries to find out their own styles and features.

 Words in Oscar Wilde’s works are full of aesthetic perception, and involving the aestheticism into the creation of fairy tales is quite a unique form, which requires translators more carefully to choose the translation method. The translation methods used by Ba Jin and Lin Huiyin are different from each other, which means the researches on their Chinese versions of The Nightingale and the Rose under the guide of functional equivalence are meaningful. In terms of theory, this research tests the feasibility of functional equivalence in translating Oscar Wilde’s works through the systematic comparative study. In terms of practice, due to the choice of special text form, this thesis will provide reference and advice on translating fairy tales.

 In order to make a systematic analysis on two Chinese versions of The Nightingale and the Rose from the perspective of functional equivalence, the author will take the following methods—literature study, comparative study and example-analysis method.

 This thesis will be pided into four chapters. The background, objectives, significance and methodology of this research will be introduced in the first chapter. It gives a brief introduction of Nida’s functional equivalence theory, Oscar Wilde and the two translators. Literature review will be in the second chapter. In the literature review, the author will talk about the previous research on functional equivalence put forward by Eugene Nida, The Nightingale and the Rose written by Oscar Wilde, the two Chinese versions and their translators Lin Huiyin and Ba Jin. The detailed analysis on the two different Chinese versions will be discussed in the third chapter. The author will mainly focus on the sentence level to analyze the different translating strategies Lin Huiyin and Ba Jin used. In the forth chapter, the author will conclude the whole thesis and put forward the limitation of this research.