Fuzziness Of Language And Translation

Since 1965 when automation control expert L.A.Zadeh put forward the concept of "fuzzy" in his article "Fuzzy Set" on Information and Control, fuzzy theory has been widely applied to multiple disciplines and the fuzzy phenomena in languages have received more and more attention. Professor Wu Tieping in Beijing Normal University is the first scholar engaged in fuzzy language studies in China who has initiated fuzzy language as an independent academic discipline in his book Fuzzy Linguistics, in which fuzzy theory has been applied to answering many formerly unexplainable questions about language, with the depth and width of language studies being broadened, thus uncovering the rules and mysteries on a higher plane of languages. Later, the fuzzy theory has been applied in an attempt to the field of translation to guide studies on translation theory and practice.Fuzzy language, as a subject of linguistics, has already aroused some interest in China. However, it seems that few scholars have heeded the relation between the fuzziness of language and translation, the reason of which might be that in translation, "faithfulness" has long been set as the first principle and that if the explicit language of the original was translated into a fuzzy one, or vice versa, it might appear "unfaithful". In fact, translation is complex and complicated; sticking to any single rule will inevitably lead to a dead lane. Fuzziness of language and preciseness, more, often than not, substitute one for another substantially which is even indispensable.Although quite a few scholars in China have realized the significance of fuzziness of language in translation, especially in literary translation, so far no monograph on "fuzziness of language and translation" has ever been published in the China's translation circles. This thesis is only a preliminary study on the subject.This thesis is divided into four chapters:Chapter One gives a brief introduction to the study of language fuzziness and concepts of fuzziness;Chapter Two introduces fuzzy logic system, and then applies fuzzy theory to analysisof the dichotomy in previous translation studies and outlines a new translation theory: Translation Studies —An Integrated Approach by Hornby;In Chapter Three, the writer of this thesis attempts to illustrate the reproduction of language fuzziness on three levels as word, sentence and text;Chapter Four discusses the strategies for the translation of language fuzziness;Lastly, the writer comes to the conclusion as follows: traditional linguistics is based on the strict two-value logic system and traditional translation theories on traditional linguistics; whereas fuzzy linguistics for the studies of language fuzziness is based on the fuzzy logic system, which naturally defies the traditional translation theories in guiding translation of language fuzziness. Fuzzy logic is initially reflected in Hornby's integrated approach, which certainly has some value in guiding translation of language fuzziness, but her theory is not a monograph on language fuzziness and translation. Therefore, inter-discipline studies on language fuzziness and translation are to be further explored and developed.