Pragmatic Equivalence: Fictional Dialogues Translation In Vanity Fair

Throughout the long history of translation, numerous translation theories have been putforward. The heatedly discussed topic, which used to be whether to choose literal translationor free translation, has been shifted to translation equivalence since 1950s and 1960s. So faras translation equivalence is concerned, scholars and translators put forward many ideas, suchas Nida's formal equivalence and dynamic equivalence, Newmark's semantic translation andcommunicative translation, and Baker's pragmatic equivalence. Different texts requirecorresponding types of translation equivalence.Fiction is one type of literature. Dialogues in fiction play an important part for they notonly show the participants' social status, personalities and provide readers with informationabout the social and cultural background, but also help the development of the plots andstimulate readers' interest. As modifications of daily conversations, fictional dialoguessometimes deliberately employ some strange or wrong spellings to reveal some impliedinformation. However, both fictional dialogues and daily conversations are closely related tothe communicative situation and participants' background knowledge.Based on Grice's cooperative principle (CP) and conversational implicature (CI), thisthesis is intended to analyze the actualization of the pragmatic meaning or implied meaningexisting in some dialogues from Thackeray's Vanity Fair by comparing Yang Bi's and GaoYuqi's Chinese versions. It concludes that pragmatic meaning takes priority in dialoguetranslation and that a translator must transfer the implied meaning of the source text to thetarget text, keep it implicit and make it understood by readers of the target text. Literaryworks are supposed to leave certain space for readers to imagine. To ensure the effectiverendering of the implied meaning, a translator can add some words or explanations to thetarget text. However, footnotes are not the good alternative in dialogue translation for theymay block the continuity of the target text. Undoubtedly, a translator is not authorized tochange the source text for the attractiveness of the target text by creating some extra impliedmeanings.