Pragmatic Equivalence In Translating Figures Of Speech

Pragmatics is a newly-developed and vibrant independent subject in linguistics. Studying language from a perspective of communicative function, it breaks a new ground for and has made great contributions to language study. Pragmatics mainly focuses on language in use, whose theories have a large explanatory power and instructive significance to translation. The two major concepts in pragmatics are"meaning"and"context". Figures of speech not only contain literal meanings, but more importantly, some implied meanings, namely, the pragmatic meanings. Mostly figures of speech are adopted to convey pragmatic meanings. Due to the indirectness of language, an utterance's literal meaning is not always consistent with the pragmatic sense it wants to convey, and figures of speech are one device of indirect language. In this sense, it is scientifically justified to study the translation of figures of speech by applying pragmatic theories.This thesis first presents the major theories in pragmatics, such as context, speech act theory, conversational implicature, and relevance theory. Their intersection and infiltration with translation come after. On this basis, some examples are given to verify that the effects of pragmatic theories on translation can not be ignored.Translation equivalence has long been a disputable issue, and has been studied from various perspectives. We find that sometimes it is very hard to achieve equivalence both in meaning and in function through semantic translation. Pragmatic equivalence can make up for this deficiency and ensure the same feeling and experience in the target readers. Relevance Theory defines translation as a dynamic process, an act of ostensive-inferential verbal (intralingual or interlingual) interpretation. By nature translation is an act of verbal communication, which takes into account the communicator's intention and the listener's expectation. The translator and target readers rely on"optimal relevance"for inference. In the relevance framework, equivalence is a dynamic and dialectical concept rather than a static and mechanical one. There exists no equivalence in absolute sense between source text and target text. In most cases, ST and TT are only equivalent in relevant respects. In translation, we can only seek for the optimal relevance in order to attain maximum equivalence.Having set the standard of pragmatic equivalence, this thesis lays emphasis on the difference between Chinese and English figures of speech, and look for suitable translation strategies to reach pragmatic equivalence. Hong Lou Meng is the greatest masterpiece among the classical Chinese novels and its language is of great artistic value. The abundant figures of speech are the most direct embodiment of its artistic value. In this thesis, we choose some major figures of speech in Hong Lou Meng as well as their translations in Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang's translated version A Dream of Red Mansions. An analysis is made on the translation strategies and effects attained in terms of pragmatic equivalence in the hope of further confirming the feasibility and significance of studying translation equivalence in the light of pragmatics.