Perlocutionary Equivalence And The Translation Of Pragmatic Vocative Texts

Equivalence can be said to be the central issue in translation although its definition,relevance, and applicability within the field of translation theory have caused heatedcontroversy, and many different theories of the concept of equivalence have beenelaborated within this field in the past fifty years. The notion of equivalence isundoubtedly one of the most problematic and controversial areas in the field of translationtheory. However, the question is no longer how equivalence might be achieved but,increasingly, what kind of equivalence can be achieved. So this term has been and will befurther analyzed, evaluated and extensively discussed from different points of view andapproached from many different perspectives. The perlocutionary equivalence indiscussion is just proposed on the basis of another perspective----Speech Act theory.According to the Speech Act theory, a speaker might be performing three actssimultaneously when he or she is speaking: locutionary act, illocutionary act andperlocutionary act. In translating, the translator should understand the real intention ofwriter and the effect on readers, as well as the literal meaning of source language, whichmeans the translation should try to achieve locutionary equivalence, illocutionaryequivalence and perlocutionary equivalence. These three "equivalences" are notindependent from each other but are so inextricably interrelated as to be regarded as nomore than different perspectives of one and the same translation. It is text type thatdetermines the perspective of translation, for example, the technical text focusing onconveying information might tend to the achievement of locutionary equivalence, whilethe vocative text focusing on readers' response maybe tend to the achievement ofperlocutionary equivalence. In recent years, the translation of pragmatic texts has beenmore and more focused on in the field of translation. In Translation Terminology, JeanDelisle (2004) claims that some 90% of the translations created in the world today can beclassified as pragmatic texts, which means the translation of pragmatic texts has greatpractical significance in daily communication. However, there is still no a clear definitionor classification of pragmatic texts at present. There exist some problems in thetranslation of pragmatic texts. So it is necessary to redefine and reclassify pragmatic textsand to approach pragmatic texts from a new perspective.The paper is to apply the perlocutionary equivalence to the translation of pragmaticvocative texts (PVT), and proposes that the translation of PVT tends to the achievementof perlocutionary equivalence while considering locutionary equivalence, illocutionaryequivalence and perlocutionary equivalence to be as no more than different perspectivesof one and the same translation, that is, the perlocutionary equivalence can be seen as thetranslation principle of PVT. Given the existing problems in the translation of pragmatictexts, it is necessary to categorize pragmatic texts. Based on Newmark's classification ontext, we can classify pragmatic texts into pragmatic expressive texts, pragmaticinformative texts and pragmatic vocative texts. The characteristics of PVT and thepurpose of the translation of PVT determine the necessity of achieving perlocutionaryequivalence. In the paper, the exemplification is used as the discussion develops, andadequate examples are supplied to show the necessity of perlocutionary equivalence intranslating PVT. The data are extracted mainly from typical pragmatic vocative texts suchas advertisements, tourist materials and public signs. The paper further proposes sometranslation techniques for achieving perlocutionary equivalence in translating PVT fromdifferent levels.