The Chinese Translation Of Irony In Shakespeare's Plays In The Perspective Of Speech Act Theory

Irony is a ubiquitous phenomenon. It has been one of the hottest researching subjects for the scholars for a long time because of its specialty. However, the translation of irony is considered as a hard nut to crack. The development of modern linguistics proves to be a brand-new way to the research of irony, especially in recent years, pragmatics gets irony explainable and accessible. In addition, pragmatics plays a guiding and meaningful role in the translation of irony. Shakespeare's vivid language and various writing styles attract more and more attention of scholars. However, there is something neglected such as irony. Hence, based on the Speech Act Theory (SAT) of J. L. Austin (2000) and J. R. Searle (1969,1976,1979), the thesis will have a research on the irony in plays of Shakespeare.Speech Act Theory is the fundamental theory of pragmatics, which is put forward by J.L. Austin. Later, J. R. Searle modifies and develops the theory. According to SAT, every utterance is a speech act. When uttering something, someone is performing an act. That is to say, someone is acting a locutionary act when he is uttering something, at the same time; he is performing an illocutionary act and a perlocutionary act. The researching focuses of SAT are specific utterances under certain circumstances, intentions of speakers and effects of utterances. The meaning in SAT refers to the intentions of the speakers, which is different from the literal meaning of semantics. Therefore, illocutionary act is what scholars of pragmatics focus on. Besides, context and background are also important factors in SAT. Based on the research of Austin, Searle (1976) classifies the illocutionary acts into five categories, which is guiding to and meaningful for the understanding and the translation of irony. The five categories of illocutionary acts are assertives, directives, commissives, expressives and declaratives. Irony is considered as an insincere indirect speech act with a certain pragmatic function under the frame of SAT.Translation is a means of communication and it is no doubt that translators are striving themselves to realize certain kinds of equivalence. Realizing the meaning equivalence is one of them. The translator plays dual roles in the process of translation. In order to realize the equivalence to some extent in the processing of translation, on one hand, the translator must communicate with the source text (ST) to understand exactly the meaning of ST; on the other hand, he must communicate with the target text (TT) to determine whether the translated version conveys the same meaning with the ST. The author believes that SAT can help the translator to realize the pragmatic meaning equivalence in translating certain language phenomena, irony included. In the process of translating irony, first, only when the translator takes the following factors in the ST: the context or the background, the intention of the speaker, the effects of the utterance, into integrated consideration can he understand completely the meaning of ST and avoid the missing of meaning in the ST. And then, the translator can decide whether the translated version has realized the pragmatic equivalence by comparing the pragmatic functions between TT and ST. Hence, the translator can decide whether the translated version is successful or not.The thesis is based on SAT to explore the irony in Shakespeare's plays, and makes a conclusion on the possibility and feasibility of applying SAT to the translation of irony from English to Chinese. Most cases of irony are selected from Shakespeare's three plays, including Othello, The Merchant of Venice and The Taming of The Shrew. Some other typical examples will be selected from Hamlet, A Midsummer-Night's Dream, The Comedy of Errors and The Two Gentlemen of Verona. As to the Chinese translated versions, most comparison will be made in the thesis between versions of Zhu Shenghao(朱生豪)and Liang Shiqiu(梁实秋)And some references are to the Chinese versions of Bian Zhilin(卞之琳)and Sun Dayu(孙大雨)The thesis is trying applying Speech Act Theory to exploring the pragmatic translation and pragmatic equivalence of irony in Shakespeare's plays from English to Chinese. The conclusion is made through researching:applying SAT to guiding the translation of the translator can retain the pragmatic meaning of the ST as far as possible in translating irony from English to Chinese. Therefore, the pragmatic equivalence is realized.