A Tentative Study Of Presupposition And Translation

This paper gives a tentative analysis of the working mechanism of presuppositions in translation.Chapter One accounts for the development of presupposition, its definition, its classification and characteristics.Chapter Two discusses the relationship between semantic presupposition and translation, and the relationship between pragmatic presupposition and translation. In this paper, the author divides pragmatic presupposition into contextual and cultural presupposition. Linguistically, as Levinson mentioned, there are 13 presupposition triggers which may help translators have a better understanding of the source text. Contextually, ambiguity arises when the speaker intentionally or unintentionally adopts some presuppositions, therefore, the context helps a lot to determine the meaning and secure the communication event. Culturally, what is presupposed in the source language (SL) may be different from what is presupposed in the target language (TL), from which misunderstanding may derive. Therefore, it is highly necessary for translators to be aware of such differences and render them properly in the target text (TT). In a word, all kinds of presuppositions mentioned above deserve the attention of the translator, which can help the translator have a better comprehension of the source text (ST) and produce a better version in the TL. Chapter Two also provides some ideas about how to deal with different kinds of presuppositions in translation, and the author of this paper believes that cultural presupposition is the most important of all.In order to further illustrate and verify that presupposition plays an important role in translation, a case study is made with special reference to the five Chinese versions of Pride and Prejudice (including the present author's version sometimes). Pride and Prejudice has consistently been the best and mostpopular novel of Jane Austen. It has been translated into many Chinese versions. As a translator, one should carefully study what the ST really presupposes, and translate the TT under the guidance of the translation techniques concerning presupposition mentioned above. Otherwise, it is almost impossible to get a satisfactory TT.