A Semiotic View Of Literary Translation

The present thesis aims to investigate, on the basis of modern semiotics, the problem of all-meaning equivalence in literary translation.Literary translation takes it as its first job to faithfully convey the meaning in the original. Although literature depends heavily on language for existence, its meaning is by no means directly conveyed by the linguistic signs used, whose contribution to literature is in fact to build up the literal meaning. On the other hand, literature conveys, besides the literal meaning, many other kinds of meaning: figurative, intentional, situational, stylistic, cultural, and so on, the translation of all of which in its turn constitutes a great challenge to literary translation. However, traditional translation studies are mostly focused on the equivalence of this or that kind of meaning which is usually realized at the level of linguistic signs, having theoretically failed to provide an effective solution to holo-translation of all the meanings contained in a work of literature.According to the principles of literary semiotics, linguistic signs and literary signs are by nature different kinds of signs. A work of literature as a whole constitutes a literary sign, whose signifier is the literal meaning of the work, or the image thus formed, and whose signified is the literary meaning the work conveys. Different from linguistic signs, the meaning conveyed by the literary sign is personal and unagreed-on. The literary sign is also one of motivated signification, which means a natural relationship exists between the literary signifier and the literary signified with the latter connoting the former.When, once again, reflecting on the problem of meaning equivalence in the light of the above theories, we find most of the translation studies in the past are basically focused on the discussion of the equivalence concerning the linguistic signs in the literary work. Meanwhile, equivalence in the light of literary semiotics is based at the level of literary sign. Since the literary signifier connotes the literarysignified, the key to the realization of holo-equivalence of literary meanings necessarily lies in the realization of the equivalence of the two literary signifiers concerned, so as thereby to realize the equivalence of the two literary signs, which becomes the basic work of literary translation.The study of the thesis, as it can be seen, provides a new semiotic view for the theoretic study of literary translation and can be of guidance to the practice and criticism of literary translation.