Illocutionary Force Equivalence

This thesis aims at applying speech act theory proposed and established by Austin (1962) and Searle (1969) to interpreting how to achieve illocutionary force equivalence in the translation of dialogues in A Dream of Red Mansions. This is a pragmatic attempt to study equivalence in translation in a specific context: translation of dialogues in literary works.Prior to this thesis, there are some different approaches to study equivalence in translation, such as functional equivalence, pragmatic equivalence and perlocutionary equivalence. On the basis of these studies, the author has proposed a new notion in this thesis: "illocutionary force equivalence". According to Austin (1962), any utterance comprises three speech acts: a locutionary act, an illocutionary act and a perlocutionary act. Based on Austin's (1962) and Searle's (1969) theories of speech act, the author mainly focuses on the illocutionary act and illocutionary force and applies the illocutionary force theory to the study of equivalence in translation.Taking some translations of the dialogues in A Dream of Red Mansions in the two English versions (one by David Hawkes, The Story of the Stone and the other by Yang Hsienyi and Gladys Yang, A Dream of Red Mansions) as the object of this thesis, the author attempts to discuss how translators are able to interpret the illocutionary force in the source language and reproduce it in the target language precisely, or as precisely as possible, so as to achieve illocutionary force equivalence in translation.With a thorough analysis, it is clear that illocutionary force equivalence can be seen as a criterion to assess the quality of the translation of dialogues in literary works. When the illocutionary force and acts in the ST have not been missed out, unnecessarily added or mistranslated, the translation can be seen as a successful one. In the process of achieving illocutionary force equivalence, translators are under the influence of certain factors: the linguistic factors, the cultural factors...