On Pragmatic Equivalence Revealed In Translation Of Dialogues In Roberts’ Version Of Three Kingdoms

Many editions of The Romance of Three Kingdoms (hereinafter referred to as ThreeKingdoms) have appeared, and the novel has been translated into different foreignlanguages since the end tof the17h century. This English edition, by US sinologist MossRoberts, is acknowledged as the best among all the English versions. Domestic scholarsstarted to pay more attention to English version studies on Three Kingdoms within lessthan a decade ago and made great achievement. They went deeper into the study onEnglish version by Mr. Moss. Through the preliminary study, the author has found thatthe domestic scholars have made research mainly from the aspects of cultural translationstrategies, titles translation compairson, honoriifc and humble words, oiffcial position,length-unit words, and curse words as well as poems and idioms translation in MossRoberts’ version. Nevetrheless, very few scholars have touched studies on characterdialogues in Three Kingdoms rendered by Moss Roberts.In this thesis, Speech Act Theory and Pragmatic Equivalent Effect are combinedtogether and a sample，qualitative and comparative analysis is also made so as to explorethe Pargmatic Equivalence revealed in the translation of dialogues in Roberts’ version ofThree Kingdoms. On the one hand，whether the character dialogues are translated well ornot is closely related to the whole literature translation. Speech Act Theory is a majorcontirbution in pragmatics and provides a good perspective for the understanding andtranslation of character dialogues. The translator is enabled to make character dialoguesmore vivid and accurate by means of analyzing the interrelationship of locutionary,illocutionary and perlocutionary effect. On the other hand, Pragmatic Equivalencebelongs to equivalent theory and becomes a new form in translation study. Comparing thesource language with the target language, Pragmatic Equivalence attaches more importance to language equivalent effect and communicative equivalent effect.This thesis is also aimed at finding a method not only correctly reflecting oirginalinformation in the translated text and the cultural-loaded words but also skillfullyintroducing Chinese long-lasting history and brilliant culture to English readers so as toprovide appropriate skills and experience for Chinese translation practice. Personally, theauthor thinks that the studies on characters dialogues in a novel should focus onpragmatic equivalence. In the process of character dialogues translation in ThreeKingdoms, translators should put pragmatic equivalence realization in the first place;meanwhile, to ensure that the implication meaning in the original language be equallyexpressed in the target language. Under the background of cultural globalization, thestudy on English version of Three Kingdoms is of great value and profound meaning.This study, belonging to Chinese classical works research, has a realistic significance inpromoting Chinese cultural development.