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Literary Translation From The Perspective Of Pragmatic Adaptation Theory

Posted on:2010-11-16Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:D B TangFull Text:PDF
GTID:2155360275477463Subject:English Language and Literature
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Jef Verschueren's pragmatic adaptation theory explains language use from cognitive, social and culture aspects and assumes that language use is a continuous making of linguistic choices with different degrees of salience for the purpose of adaptation. Under his choice-making and adaptation framework, translation can be understood as a process of linguistic transference and cultural transmission consisting of the continuous choice-making and adapting, consciously or unconsciously, for the target text context and linguistic structure reasons. Literature is a form of art using language to create artistic images, the language features, together with cultural transmission and the expressive, emotive and aesthetic functions of literary texts constitute the particularities and complexities of literary translation. In view of these features, this thesis is dedicated to study literary translation from pragmatic adaptation theory, and points out that literary translation is a dynamic choice-making and adaptation process. First, structural objects of adaptability shows that translators'linguistic choices involve the choice-making and adaptation of languages, codes and styles and a series of utterance-building ingredients Second, contextual correlates of adaptability requires translators to adapt to source text writer's and target text readers'communicative and linguistic context. Translators should adapt to target readers'mental world, social world and physical world when making linguistic choices. At the same time, he should also take into consideration the principle of cohesion, the transferability of intertextuality and rules of sequencing in different languages. Dynamics of adaptability means literary translation is a dynamic development process. In microscopic scales, the adaptation of linguistic structure to the context and the generation of meaning in the process of literary translation is a dynamic process. In macroscopic scales, a target text should adapt to the social environment, historical origins, economic modes, geographical environment, and religious beliefs etc. The dynamic of literary translation lies in the fact that new translated versions spring up to meet the needs of readers from different times or different translation purposes. In the choice-making and adaptation process of literary translation, a translator will show different degrees of salience. And the translated version will be affected by translators'metapragmatic awareness, purposes, and target social ideology and language ideology. Pragmatic adaptation theory has strong explanation power for literary translation. Through various literary translation examples, this thesis comes to the conclusion that in literary translation, no matter what translation strategies and techniques a translator chooses, for example, abridged translation, full translation, literal, liberal, domestification, foreignization, additional translation, lessened translation, annotation, the translators'choices are based on realizing the adaptation to linguistic and context to the maximal degree. Under pragmatic adaptation theory, we can establish an adaptability literary translation framework to study the influence of these restrictive factors in the choice-making translation process. Pragmatic adaptation theory provides a new thinking in literary translation. And it also provides a power gist for literary translation criticism.
Keywords/Search Tags:pragmatic adaptation theory, literary translation, structural objects of adaptability, contextual correlates of adaptability, dynamics of adaptability, salience of adaptation process
PDF Full Text Request
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