On Fuzziness In Literary Translation

Fuzziness is an inherent feature of natural language, which refers to the indeterminacy and uncertainty of language. Literature is the art of language; hence it features fuzziness as well. In Fuzzy Linguistics, Wu Tieping believes that in literary works, "artistic image is the refining and summary of realistic image and the appreciators get to know the artistic works through controlling their moods, while emotion and mood are both the multi-factorial fuzzy set, therefore the literary works are bound to possess characteristics of fuzzy inference and fuzzy conception." Fuzziness of literature is reflected in the fuzziness of literary language, fuzziness of artistic conceptions and fuzziness of syntactic structures.As a complex inter-lingual act, literary translation is inevitably fuzzy, which refers to both the translation of literature and the act of literary translation. Besides the fuzziness of literature itself, fuzziness of literary translation can also be found in the process of translation and translation criteria, and the subjectivity of translator also causes fuzziness of the translation works.Fuzziness and preciseness are a unity of opposites, which supplement each other and can be transformed into each other under certain conditions. Therefore, the writer proposes three techniques, namely, translating fuzziness into preciseness, translating fuzziness into fuzziness and translating preciseness into fuzziness. Many examples will be given, which represent the commonness of fuzziness in literature and the feasibility of the application of the three techniques.Fuzziness brings us a new perspective to literary translation research and help with improving the translation level. However, both fuzziness and preciseness are attributes of language, neither should be underestimated nor over-exaggerated. The degree of fuzziness is something we need to bear in mind when we focus on the fuzziness study.