Translation Equivalence From A Pragmatic Perspective

Translation is a kind of cultural activity to convey the linguistic, cultural and stylistic message expressed in one language in another different language. So translation is not only a linguistic process, but also a kind of cultural activity, an intercultural activity. Being a kind of communicative activity, translation means translating meaning (Nida, 1993), and its first and foremost aim is to convey properly the meaning of the original so that the TL readers can have a similar effect as the SL readers. Etymologically, the morpheme "trans-" means " to carry over", and to translate is to carry over what is said from one language to another. In Chinese, "译者,易也", 易即转换, 翻译就是"换个说法". The question is how to recapture the meaning of the original in a quite different form-another language during the process of translating without any distortion?In translation there seems a never-ending dispute whether we should adopt literal translation or free translation. As a matter of fact, viewed from the pragmatic perspective, the two methods don't contradict each other at all. By using literal translation, we don't mean word-for-word translation, or an absolute equivalence between the input and the output on the surface level, which in fact is impossible. On the other hand, free translation doesn't mean arbitrary interpretation. The method we propose is one that can best convey the real meaning, the author's real intention, the semantic meaning, the pragmatic force and the imlicature, esp. the illocutionary function of the source text. Some linguistic, pragmatic and translation theories have been used in the thesis to analyze the levels and the theoretical basis on which translation equivalence is based. In addition, the author discusses the relation between pragmatics and translation, and the strong power of pragmatic translation in accounting for "the most complex thing in the history of the cosmos"(Richards, 1953). Viewed from the pragmatic perspective, the core and ultimate goal of translation is to convey correctly the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic meaning in the context so as to establish translation equivalence to the greatest possible degree.The thesis first examines the origin of the word "equivalence". Equivalence, one of the most important notions in the translation theory, is not only a basic problem in the West for the past 2000 years, but also one of the basic issues in modern translation science. Equivalence can be used both in a narrow and broadsense. It is the differences between the two references that cause confusion about translation equivalence. It is pointed out that equivalence in translation refers to the correspondence, approximation, identity, interchangeability and adequacy rather than the total, absolute and perfect similarities between the SL and TL. Moreover, equivalence embodies differently, with different texts being equivalent on different degrees, levels and ranks.The third part of the thesis explores equivalence and equivalence translation. The possibility of translation equivalence is based on translatability, which is based on four factors: isomorphs of all human beings, the identity of humans thinking modes, the rough identity in grammatical elements and functions of all languages and the mutual infiltration of cultures. The ideal equivalence is one that is established on all levels at the same time in the whole text, but it is impossible. As a matter of fact, equivalence is limited by several factors, esp. by culture-specific factors. Sometimes, some major equivalence on a certain level has to be established at the sacrifice of the minor ones. Under this kind of circumstance, if one continues to seek mechanically for formal equivalence without taking cultural differences into considerations, there is only misunderstanding and failure in communication. Translation, a kind of communication, depends naturally on the author1 intention and the readers' expectation.With the development of linguistics, it has become clear that some specific language...