A Semiotic Approach To The Fuzziness In The Classical Chinese Poems And Its Translation

Semiotics is a developing discipline and modern semiotics is well known as the principal methodology of all researches relevant to the humanity subjects. The domain of its research covers an extensive range from social science to humanity learning, from sociology, anthropology, and culture to aesthetics and literary theories. The famous semiotician, Li Youzheng once pointed out that semiotics would be a prevailing learning in the 21st century China and it will be a new world centre for semiotic studies. Over the past few decades, a host of Chinese scholars have been contributing themselves to studying semiotics and doing researches in the humanity realm which also includes literary field and translation theories and practice.There are two aspects of the research of literary semiotics. One is that of the theories of literary semiotics; the other is that of specific analysis and interpretation for certain literary works. In the translation field, many scholars have adopted the semiotic method to study different aspects of translation. As Hawks has said in his book Formalism and Semiotics, it is essential for translators to acknowledge that although translation is a language activity, it is part of semiotics.The classical Chinese poems are characterized by their suggestiveness, subtlety, implicitness and simplicity, which reflect that they embody fuzziness. Fuzziness also exists in the process of its translation. Concurrently, translation studies of the classical Chinese poems have been enjoying a rapid development and have reached a new apex now at home for the single fact that these studies have been invigorated by the development in cultural studies, literary studies, information and communication theories, semiotics and linguistics. Among the above-mentioned approaches, semiotics, as the semantic and logic basis of humanity subjects, is capable of giving a scientific and accurate analysis to the fuzzy cultural and academic phenomena. This thesis applies the concepts and theories in semiotics to give a scientific analysis of fuzziness in the classical Chinese poems and its translation.At the very beginning of this thesis, the author briefly reviews the historical background and recent development of both semiotics and translation in each other's field. Meanwhile, the author also gives a general introduction to the language phenomenon—fuzziness and an elaborate description of the fuzziness embodied in the classical Chinese poems from semantic, syntactic and imagery levels as well as its aesthetic features and the reasons why such kind of fuzziness exists.Then the author gives a specific explanation of fuzziness in the classical Chinese poems as well as its translation in light of semiotics, the former of which is also done from semantic, syntactic and imagery levels corresponding to semantics, syntax and pragmatics of Morris' three semiotic branches. In this part, the author also discusses the equivalence in transferring the fuzziness of the classical Chinese poems and the barriers in the process of achieving such kind of equivalence.Based on the theoretical exploration introduced above, the author finally aims at exploring the application of semiotics to the fuzziness in translating the classical Chinese poems. On one hand, the author gives a semiotic analysis to the fuzziness in translating the classical Chinese poems; on the other hand, some useful strategies are put forward correspondingly.