【正文】 or whole sentences) and literal translation (translating the meanings of individual words in their more or less exact syntactic sequence) respectively. In Nida’s opinion, the two methods for translation is really important, and they can be used in different translation situations. But his original definition of dynamic equivalence was rhetorical: the idea was that the translator should translate so that the effect of the translation on the target reader is roughly the same as the effect of the source text once was on the source reader.(1969:29,45) The Development of Functional Equivalence TheoryAround the 19th century, Yan Fu, a great translator, e up with the three principle of translation—faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance, which is known to most of us. Faithfulness means equivalence, mainly concerning the original text and the author. Expressiveness refers to the relationship between the translation and the target readers. It focus on expressing the thought of the original text through various techniques. What’s more, elegance relates to style. All in all, Yan Fu made great contributions to the development of translation of China. In the following days, a lot of translators and translation theorist showed up, such as Lu Xun, Qu Qiubai and Ji Xianlin, and so on. They also put forward a great number of translation theories related to the equivalence theory in the western world. All of them have done a lot to the development of functional equivalence theory. Functional equivalence is one of the most suitable translation theories for CE menu translation. Briefly, , Nida, Catford, Baker, Newmark and Wilss, all of these theorists have contributed to explaining the connotation of equivalence, approached equivalence from different perspectives and all have contributed much to this area of research.The development of Functional Equivalence Theory can be divided into three phases.The first is Functional Equivalence Theory on the basis of the modern linguistics. He successfully applied the research achievements of the modern linguistics into translation theories. Through the nature of language, he uses the semantics to analyze every words. In Nida’s opinion, there is something mon in various language structures, what’s more, there is much more similarity in deep structure than in the surface. As a result, we can ensure the translation version loyal to the original text by transforming the deep structures among different languages. This kind of translation is both loyal and coherent, which creates the same reaction for readers and creates conditions for the functional equivalence.The second phase is Functional Equivalence Theory based on the Information Theory. Nida thinks that translation is an activity to convey the information of one language into another language. The purpose of translation is to convey information and then to reach the goal of munication. Only if the target readers get the same amount of information as the original readers can similize the relation between the target readers and the translation and that between the original readers and text. In order to achieve this goal, Nida emphasizes that the original text can be adjusted in order to help readers better understand the translation text.The third phase is Functional Equivalence based on the social semiotics theory. Nida thinks that translation is to translate the meaning, and semeiology is the most prehensive system of analyzing the meaning. In his book, he points out that the social semiotics focuses on all codes of human society, while the focus of focuses is language. Therefore, in terms of decoding and encoding, no other translation method is more prehensive than the social semiotics. The Content of Functional Equivalence TheoryNida points out that in order to reach the ideal translation, it is necessary to find the closest natural equivalence. Nida’s functional equivalence theory open up a new perspective to translation studies.As far as Nida concerned, translation is not the In Nida’s view, translation is not only to gather the meaning of every word, on the contrary, it puts emphasis on many aspects, such as semantics, style, the message translation of both the surface lexical information and deep cultural information. Nida’s focus on receptor’s response in his new concept of translating is actually the theory of dynamic equivalence, which is “directed primarily toward equivalence of response rather than equivalence of form”.As Nida himself wrote in the glossary of The Theory and Practice of Translation, dynamic equivalence is the quality of a translation in which the message of the original text has been so transported into the receptor language that the response of the receptor is essentially like that of the original receptors. (1969:200) Nida tended to use the term so that the response of the receptor was mostly semantics authority) and pathos (how the reader feels about the text).Afterwards, Nida prefered to use the term “functional equivalence”. “funtional equivalence” means not only the equivalence between the function of the original text in the original culture and the function of the target text in the target culture. This term contains more than the structure of texts. The Significance of Functional Equivalence TheoryFunctional Equivalence Theory has a profound influence on the translation field. From the macroscopic perspective , Functional Equivalence Theory is different from the traditional thoughts, and provides the studies on translation with new perspectives, and brings new concepts and methods into translation. At the same time, it also gives out challenges to traditional translation thoughts and gives a blow to the translation theories based on Empiricism. Functional Equivalence Theory lays a solid foundation for the modern translation theories. What we must put emphasis on is Functional Equivalence Theory promotes the development of translation stu