Reproduction Of Conversational Implicature In Translating Western Detective Fiction

Detective fiction is an important genre of literature. Despite the fact that thousands of Western detective novels have been translated into Chinese and welcomed by Chinese readers. research on detective fiction translation is insufficient. More or further study is necessary.Dialogues account for a large proportion of the whole detective story and play an important role in the story-telling. Characters in detective stories don’t express themselves directly. More often than not, they mean much more than what they actually say. This thesis, employing the theory of conversational implicature, analyzes speech implicature in dialogues of detective novels, examines their Chinese versions to see how well or improperly they are reproduced by analyzing some translations which are open to question, and suggests improved translations under related principles of conversational implicature. Some techniques for conveying conversational implicature in E/C translation are recommended in order to enhance the quality of the translation of detective novels.There are two levels of implicature. The first is conveyed between characters and the second is conveyed by the author to readers. Both levels of implicature should be carefully reproduced in the translation.The thesis describes the principles for reproduction of implicature in translating detective novels:implicature which is essential to reader’s inference and development of the main plot should be clearly understood by the TL reader; and implicature which is of minor importance to inference and plot development should be maintained implicit in the TT. The process of translating conversational implicture is found to involve two steps:the process of the translator working out the implicit meanings with the help of the context of the source language (SL); and the process of the translator reproducing the implicit meanings in agreement with the target language (TL) context. The context is a crucial and indispensable element in the transference of conversational implicature. At the end, the thesis suggests the application of concrete techniques such as literal translation, annotation and paraphrasing to translating detective stories from English into Chinese in terms of reproducing conversational implicature.The application of conversational implicature theory to the translation of Western detective novels may help to effectively reproduce the speech implicature within the novels, and will enhance the quality of detective novel translation.