Reflection On The Translation Of Social Dialects Through Marker Equivalence

Under the framework of language variation by Halliday, McIntosh and Strevens and in view of markedness theory and functional equivalence translation, this thesis aims at raising reflections on the translation strategies of social dialect through case studies by examining the two Chinese versions of Tess of the d'Urbervilles .Specifically analyzing the strategies adopted by the two translators—Mr. Zhang Gu-ruo and Mr. Sun Fa-li, this thesis attempts to make a contrastive study of these strategies to evaluate the social dialect translation in the two versions and provide a theoretical explanation to the successful translation from spoken form, glossary, appellation, sentence structure, precondition, meaning, social status and educational background and so on. As for the social dialect, most studies have confined themselves to an argument on the methodology of translation, that is, whether to translate a source language dialect with an "equivalent" one in the target language and what method to take in translation to solve problems brought by dialects in text. Through analytical contrast, there are mainly two methods in translating social dialect: dialect-for-dialect translation and compensation translation.This thesis does not aim to give a final conclusion of which version is more appropriate, accurate or acceptable and which one is not. It is programmed to put forward some thoughts on the translation of social dialects by comparing the strong and weak points in the two versions from marker equivalence; in addition, based on the analysis and discussion, this thesis would attempt to put forward some advice on dialect translation for consideration.