A Study On Dialogue Translation In Wuthering Heights From The Perspective Of Discourse Stylistics

As a special form of literature, fictional dialogue not only conveys information toreaders, but also makes a great contribution to the depiction of characters, thedescription of the background and the development of the plot. Many scholars haveconducted a number of researches on fictional dialogue translation from differentperspectives such as the literary stylistic perspective, aesthetic perspective,sociolinguistic perspective, ethnolinguistic perspective, pragmatic perspective,sociosemiotic perspective and so on. Different perspectives may provide differentclues to the research with their respective advantages and disadvantages.In fictional dialogue translation, the translator plays the role of the mediator ofthe inter-cultural exchange, who is supposed to have a cooperative interaction withboth the speakers of the original work and the readers of the target languages. In thisprocess, the translator is entitled to certain freedom to adopt different strategies toensure that his/her rendition in the target language is informative, faithful andconforms to the language convention of the target language. The author has chosenseveral models in Discourse Stylistics as the analytical tool of the thesis. Main modelsadopted by Discourse Stylistics to analyze literary dialogue come from followinganalysis models of daily conversation: conversation analysis model introduced byanthropology, Birmingham discourse analysis model represented by J. Sinclair and M.Coulthard in University of Birmingham, the model based on face principle putforward by E. Goffman and politeness concepts by G. Brown and S. Levinson,cooperative principle model and speech act theory model based on Grice’scooperative principle.This thesis studies dialogue translation in fiction by way of the comparison andcontrast of two Chinese versions of Wuthering Heights translated by Yang Yi andFang Ping from the perspective of Discourse Stylistics. Proceeding from Grice’s cooperative principle, the violation of the cooperative principle made by the translatorhas been evaluated under the guidance of speech act theory and face and politenessprinciple. In addition, the author has categorized the translations violating thecooperative principle and concluded the functions and effects of the violation. Apartfrom examining the feasibility and necessity of the application of Discourse Stylisticsto the study of dialogue translation in fiction, this thesis has also summarizedrespective merits and demerits of two Chinese versions based on the comprehensiveassessment and evaluation of two versions. Several extra-textual factors that mayexert influence on the translation and some suggestions of translation are also given inthe hope that it can provide certain aid to translators in their future practice.