A Semiotic Analysis Of English Versions Of Official Titles In Liaozhai Zhiyi

Liaozhai Zhiyi is a collection of more than five hundred tales written by Pu Songling in the Qing dynasty. It is a gem in the corpus of China’s classical literary works. There have been some other translation researches under the guidance of Semiotics, but none of them is on Liaozhai Zhiyi. Based on Morris’ three semiotic meanings theory, this thesis evaluates the translated version of Liaozhai Zhiyi included in Library of Chinese Classics published by Foreign Languages Press. It mainly focuses on the translation of official titles in Liaozhai Zhiyi.This thesis divides official titles in Liaozhai Zhiyi into two categories:official titles that actually exist and fictional official titles. The thesis also ranks the importance of the factors of semiotic meanings for these two kinds of official titles and evaluates whether the translations can fully reflect such factors. In conclusion, for official titles that actually exist, the referential meaning is more important. However, general official titles are diverse in meaning and should be evaluated according to their own contexts. For fictional official titles, the translation should focus on both rendering referential meanings and reducing unnecessary pragmatic meanings. When the official titles also carry intralingual meanings, certain strategies can be employed to compensate for the loss of pragmatic meanings.