On The Translation Of Socio-semiotic Meanings:a Comparative Study Of Two Translated Versions Of Shuihuzhuan

The thesis studies the translation of socio-semiotie meanings based on a comparative study of two English versions of Shuihuzhuan. Socio-semiotic meanings are abundant in Shuihuzhuan and feature unique Chinese cultures. Dating back at least 700 years ago, the novel is set against the background of the late Northern Song Dynasty. Through the vivid portraits of various heroic characters and the huge collection of legendary stories, Shuihuzhuan gives readers an exploration into the social and institutional environment of China during that period of history and an in-depth taste of Chinese culture. Therefore, the understanding of socio-semiotic meanings in Shuihuzhuan is impossible without a good knowledge of the culture, which incurs considerable difficulty in translation.With four exiting English versions, the thesis will carry out a comparative study on Pearl’s version-All Men are Brothers and Dent-Youngs’version-The Marshes of Mount Liang. The former is the first translation of Shuihuzhuan into English while the latter is the latest one. The significant difference between the two translations is that Buck prefered foreignization while Dent-Youngs tended to use localization, which provides a good material for a comparative study between semantic and communicative translations.The theoretical value is that this study discloses the differences between the two English versions of Shuihuzhuan in translating various meanings and at the meantime trace the causes of those differences, based on which the author aims to conclude general translation principles in rendering socio-semiotic meanings. To be more specific, firstly it is theoretically valuable to discuss the translations of diverse meanings in Shuihuzhuan. Through the comparative study, the thesis assesses the effects achieved by different translation methods with the theory of functional equivalence and relates the difference to translation-related factors such as the limitations to translation methods. Therefore, it concludes how Pearl S. B. and Dent-Youngs translate socio-semiotic meanings:In translating referential meanings although generally speaking Dent-Youngs’translation uses communicative translation more frequently while Pearl Buck’s translation has a tendency towards semantic one, Dent-Youngs and Pearl Buck adjusted their translation methods according to distinctive characteristics of the referential meaning rather than following a fixed method. It is because referential meanings fall into various categories and each kind of them gives unique issues in translation. In translating intralingual meaning, a strong preference for communicative translation over semantic one is shown in Den-Youngs’translation while Pearl Buck strived to preserving intralingual meaning characteristic of Chinese with semantic translation. However, in translating unique linguistic phenomenon of Chinese such as Shuangsheng and Dieyun, the two translations coincide in following communicative translation. The effect of pragmatic meaning is more important than its linguistic features, and thus communicative translation often turns out to be a more justified method than semantic translation and it prevails in both Den-Youngs’and Pearl Buck’s translation of pragmatic meaning. Despite that, it still can be seen from Pearl Buck’s translation that she attempted to exploit almost every possibility of preserving the original contextual meaning with semantic translation as long as the effect is kept.Secondly, the thesis goes beyond the two versions of Shuihuzhuan to study the translation of socio-semiotic meanings in general. It discusses the translatability of socio-semiotic meanings and explores translation principles applicable to the translations of socio-semiotics meanings in general, which is of high theoretical value because socio-semiotic meanings are omnipresent in various contexts. Generally speaking referential meaning of general terms are translatable, as the entities referred to can be found in both source and target cultures. The process of rendering general terms can be simplified into seeking corresponding terms to describe the entities. Second, culture-specific terms are divided into 13 sectors, each of which gives rise to distinctive issue in translation. Some culture-specific terms are untranslatable. Intralingual meaning in most cases is untranslatable, especially on phonological and lexical levels due to the uniqueness of English and Chinese in phonetics and lexics. In terms of phonetics, onomatopoeia and End rhyme are the kinds of intralingual meaning which can be found both in English and Chinese, but the significant difference in phonetic systems among others causes untranslatability. Shuangsheng, dieyun and reduplicative words are so peculiar to Chinese that it is hardly possible to retain the intralingual meaning in target text and the contextual meaning at the same time. In terms of lexics, anagram and transferred epithet can be used both in English and Chinese, but they are mostly untranslatable since they are the products of the unique lexical features of one particular language. The degree of translatability of pragmatic meaning is in-between those of referential meaning and intralingual meaning. The use of dialects and a variety of self-claim terms in Chinese are the chief causes of untranslatability in rendering identificational meaning. In translating expressive meaning, the emotional contents of expressive meaning are retainable in translation, because they are universally shared by people despite races or languages. However, the linguistic forms of the emotion contents are not always translatable. In translating associative meaning, speakers of different languages may not derive different associative meaning from a same content. In that case, communicative translation needed to be employed.