Pragmatic Enrichment In English Translations Of Chinese Judgments: An OT Perspective

Inspired by Optimality Theory("OT") and Bhatia's Applied Genre Analysis,the present thesis takes pragmatic enrichment in English translations of Chinese judgments as its object of study.For purposes of the present research,pragmatic enrichment in translation refers to the product as the result of the process involving the development of a source text into its fully determinate conceptual representation by employing an enrichment procedure and the translation of this fully enriched thought into another language.Several pragmatic enrichments are presented in the following study with translation examples.They are deictic enrichment,conceptual enrichment,thematic enrichment,enrichment based on discourse relations,enrichment based on implicature,and enrichment based on legal explanation.Moreover,the present theoretical framework is based on the optimality theory.The key of this theory is that it includes a series of constraints to evaluate many candidates until the optimal candidate is selected.Under the enlightenment of such theory,the present study has decided on four constraints based on Vijay Bhatia's model of Applied Genre Analysis:textual constraint,generic constraint,professional practice constraint,and professional cultural constraint.The key point of the present thesis is to use these four constraints to analyze and judge the appropriateness of the various pragmatic enrichments in English translations of Chinese judgments in order to contribute to the improvement of the quality of English translations of Chinese judgments in particular,and to the translation studies of other text types in general.