Pragmatic Markedness Theory And Its Application In Literary Translation Criticism

Translation assessment is always an important topic in translation research field. For quite a long time, whether and how we can measure (calculate) translation quality is a difficult task. This thesis furthers the study of markedness theory in terms of pragmatics, and attempts to apply this theory to numerical translation assessment."Pragmatic Markedness Effect Balance"principle proposed is a new viewpoint of translation assessment standard. It proposes that, translation quality should be assessed in terms of cognitive effect, emotional effect, aesthetic effect and creative effect. In a good translation, the effects of the target text and the source text on their respective receptors should be balanced.Four chapters compose this thesis. Chapter one gives a brief account of markedness theory and discusses criteria for identification of markedness. The development of markedness theory and its studies in linguistics are concluded in this chapter. In chapter two, markedness theory is further studied from pragmatic perspective. Moreover, the relationship between markedness theory and such pragmatic fields as context, conversation analysis, indirect speech acts and adaptability, and particularly the markedness characteristics of such pragmatic fields in translation are explored. Chapter three is the central part of the whole thesis. This chapter firstly reviews the general approaches to translation assessment and then proposes"Pragmatic Markedness Effect Balance"principle which considers the effect comparison between the source text and the target text in terms of cognition, emotion, beauty (aesthetic effect) and creation. With the help of calculation model, this principle, as a numerical translation assessment approach, can be used to evaluate the quality of different translation versions of the same source text. Next, two Chinese versions of"Gone with the Wind"are taken as examples of translation quality comparison in terms of this principle. The last chapter draws a conclusion of the whole thesis: on the basis of the balance of cognition, emotion, beauty and creation, the effects of the target text and the source text on their respective receptors should be identical or at least approximate; hence, good translation can be achieved. The"Pragmatic Markedness Effect Balance"effect based on pragmatics and markedness theory is a salutary tentative for numerical translation assessment. In this principle, the numerical effect balance values (NEBV) of some parameters such as wording, structure (sentential and textual), politeness, rhetoric, indirectness, etc. are used for translation assessment as well as the translation quality comparison of different versions of the same source text. NEBV refers to the degree of effect balance in terms of cognition, emotion, beauty and creation. This principle plays a positive role both on theoretical and practical level, so it is worth further study and consummation.