An Analysis of the Use of Functional Equivalence Theory in Novel Translation—Taking Everything I Never Told You as an Example

As a literary genre, novels have unique and distinctive artistic characteristics. Novel translation should not only follow the corresponding communication purpose, but also take into account the linguistic characteristics and cultural factors of the novel, and strive to retain the style of the original in the translated text, to ensure that the translated text can bring readers the same reading experience as the original. This concept coincides with Eugene Nida's theory of functional equivalence. Based on Eugene Nida's functional equivalence theory, this paper will analyze the translation of Everything I Never Told You from three levels: lexical, syntactic and textual. As for the lexical level, the four-character Chinese structure is suggested. At the syntactic level, the right combination and division strategies should be used according to the source language text. When dealing with the textual level, two aspects should be taken into account, i.e. the communicative context and the situational context, to ensure the accurate translation of specific terms, phrases and sentences.