On Pragmatic Vagueness In Literary Works And Its Translation

As the subject of this thesis, pragmatic vagueness is not only an effective means of communication, but also a significant skill of literary creation. It is first brought in by He Ziran in 1990. It has usually been fallen under the framework of speech act theory and is dedicated to analyzing the unclear meaning in speech communication, but rarely in literary works and its translation. To be frank, the translation of literary works is a three-dimension communication which involves the writer, the translator and the readers. Literary pragmatic vagueness generates in dialogues and other parts of the descriptions, which aim to the artistic conception and aesthetics. Compared with the translation of natural vague language, the translation of pragmatic vagueness focuses more on pragmatic effect, which requires that the translator should attempt to convey the optional pragmatic communication, meanwhile to maintain the vague effect of pragmatic vagueness.This thesis adopts the methods of case analysis and literature review. Taking the prospective of the original writer and two communicative parties, the author undertakes the study of literary pragmatic vagueness on the basis of previous studies. And by analyzing the examples extracted from Fortress Besieged from the phonetic, lexical, syntactic and cultural aspects, available translation strategies are presented, among which, notes adding can provide more cultural background information to figure out the illocutionary meaning and to preserve the form of pragmatic vagueness. As the key to the translation of pragmatic translation, pragmatic equivalence can be achieved by diverse approaches. Furthermore, contexts play a key role in this process. The conclusion of this thesis is that pragmatic vagueness is an important manifestation of art, and its translation is an indispensable part of translation studies. This study is a significant attempt to investigate the translation of literary pragmatic vagueness and offers an only marginal contribution to translation studies. As the subject of the present thesis, pragmatic vagueness is not only an effective means of communication, but also a significant skill of literary creation. This term is first put forward by Leech in 1983 and then brought in by He Ziran in 1990. Usually it falls under the framework of speech act theory and is dedicated to analyzing the unclear meaning in speech communication, rarely applied in literary works and their translation. It is noted that the translation of literary works is a three-dimension communication which involves the writer, the translator and the readers. Therefore, literary pragmatic vagueness generates in dialogues and other parts of the descriptions aiming to the artistic conception and aesthetics. Compared with the translation of natural vague language, the translation of pragmatic vagueness focuses more on the pragmatic effect, which requires that the translator should attempt to convey the optional pragmatic communication, meanwhile to maintain the vague effect of pragmatic vagueness.This thesis adopts both conceptual and empirical methods by case analysis and literature review. Taking the prospective of the original writer and two communicative parties, the author undertakes the study of literary pragmatic vagueness on the basis of the previous studies. And by analyzing the examples extracted from Wei Cheng from the phonetic, lexical, syntactic and cultural aspects, available translation strategies are presented, among which, notes adding can provide more cultural background information to figure out the illocutionary meaning and to preserve the linguistic form of pragmatic vagueness. Meanwhile, as the key to the translation of pragmatic translation, pragmatic equivalence can be achieved through diverse approaches. Furthermore, contexts play a key role in this process. The conclusion of the thesis is that pragmatic vagueness is an important manifestation of art, and its translation is an indispensable part of translation studies. The study is a significant attempt to investigate the translation of literary pragmatic vagueness and offers an only marginal contribution to the translation studies.