Pragmatic Analysis Of Dialogue Translation In Jane Eyre

This thesis aims at studying the fictional dialogue translation and analyzing the dialogue translation in Zhu Qingying’s Chinese translation of Jane Eyre from pragmatic perspective, especially in terms of cooperative principle and politeness principle.Jane Eyre, one of Charlotte Bronte’s masterpieces, has won great popularity in the circle of English literature. There are many classic dialogues in it. The dialogues are full of wits and are of multifunction, and have been regarded as the most impressive and memorable part in this novel. But it is no easy job to winkle out its deep thought and translate its meaningful dialogues into other languages like Chinese. Since its first complete Chinese version rendered by Li Jiye came into being in1936, new versions have successively appeared. Criticisms and reviews on Jane Eyre and its Chinese versions have been in a great number and in various approaches, thus providing us with different perceptions of this outstanding novel. However, the study concerned with dialogue translation in Jane Eyre is comparatively rare. This thesis chooses the dialogues in Jane Eyre as the subject of study given the fact that dialogues occupy a great part in the whole book, and they are the soul of this masterpiece. The translation of dialogues in Jane Eyre deserves more detailed and systematic study.Although it is an imitation of daily conversation and is deliberately and elaborately arranged by the author, fictional dialogue is still governed by pragmatic principles. There are many cases that a participant in a talk exchange may flout maxims of the cooperative principle in daily conversation. Thus conversational implicature arises, which is true of fictional dialogue. In fact, the violation of cooperative principle maxims between characters is usually employed by the author as a means to represent characters’ inner world, such as psychological state, sentimental attitude and mental activities. Conversational implicature generated in this way conveys characters’ real intention. Thus it can be seen that in the translating process, or to be more specific, in analyzing, understanding and reproducing fictional dialogues, applying cooperative principle can help the translator to grasp conversational implicature between lines and to improve the quality of his or her translation. This thesis analyzes the dialogue translation concerning the cases of flouting the maxims of quantity, quality, relation and manner of cooperative principle in Jane Eyre, and discusses some translation strategies the translator often adopted, such as literal translation, paraphrasing, annotation and choosing the right emotional words. Although it can be used to explain how the conversation implicature is produced and understood, the cooperative principle in practice fails to account for why people choose to imply rather than assert an idea. One important motive for this is the desire to give some attention to politeness, i.e. cooperative consideration is given the back seat for the purpose of being polite. Due to differences in cultural background, such as geographical environment, way of thinking, belief and custom, the politeness norms are quite different between English and Chinese. The politeness principle can help the translator better understand the original politeness norms and reproduce them correctly and faithfully. Therefore, pragmatic approach will help the translator to correctly understand the source text and effectively express in the target text. Under the guidance of pragmatic approach to fictional dialogue translation, this thesis aims at pointing out that in the process of translation, the translator should try his or her best to apply cooperative principle and politeness principle to grasp conversational implicature and reproduce it faithfully and accurately, so as to achieve pragmatic equivalence.This thesis illustrates in detail how cooperative principle and politeness principle are actually applied to dialogue translation in Jane Eyre and proves the feasibility and maneuverability of pragmatic approach in guiding and criticizing the fictional dialogue translation. Though pragmatic approach to dialogue translation should not be expected to solve all problems arising in the understanding and translating process, this approach to fictional dialogue translation is of paramount significance.