An Iconicity-based Approach To Word Order Shift In E-C Translation

Nowadays, the studies on transposing in E-C translation mainly focus on translating skills, but the theoretical basis of transposing in E-C translation is ignored in some ways. The different syntactic system across languages often leads to failure in correspondence in terms of word order, which usually demands a translational shift in terms of word order so as to make translation adapted to ways of expression which the target language readers are familiar with. Haiman (1980,1985) contributes a lot to the studies on iconicity principle discussion, and his studies on iconic sequence derived from iconicity principle lay the theoretical foundation for transposing during the process of translation.Pierce (1940) proposes three categories of sign. Icon is one part of the sign and is then further divided into imagic icon, diagrammatic icon and metaphor. Based on Pierce’s theory, Haiman (1980) divides diagrammatic icon into isomorphism and motivation and motivation is further divided into quantity iconicity, sequence iconicity, distance iconicity and markedness iconicity. As for the investigation into word order in this thesis, sequence iconicity accounts for transposing in E-C translation. This thesis tends to probe into word order shift based on the sequence iconicity, which aims to explain word order shift from the comparative studies across languages and guides the translator’s performance.First, in the section of literature review, the thesis illustrates the studies on iconicity theories at home and abroad, and then puts up Haiman’s sequence iconicity as the theoretical framework for this thesis and borrows something from the idea of Wang Yin, Shen Jiaxuan, Liu Miqing. Then it studies the traditional ways of word order shift, which distinguishes from the iconicity-based approach adopted in this thesis. In the part of literature review, iconicity and sequence iconicity are further expounded.Then the iconic sequence is illustrated. Contrastive studies on hypotaxis and parataxis provide theoretical basis for distinguishing different syntactic system across languages. Then, the sequence of iconicity is further explored and the theoretical structure from the three parts of temporal sequence, space sequence and logic sequence, which enrich the theoretical structure of transposing.Transposing studies based on the sequence iconicity is the most valuable and meaningful in this thesis. First, the transposing in E-C translation is expected to be classified into non-equivalent word order shift and equivalent word order shift, which is expected to be further elucidated by translation examples. And then the form of word order in E-C translation is compared in two ways, equivalent word order between English and Chinese and nonequivalent word order between English and Chinese, which makes the word order shift clearer. At last, the comparison of syntactic system of English and Chinese makes the theoretical evidence highly improved. The conclusion is that, since there are differences in syntactic systems in E-C translation, during the process of translation, translators can employ word order shift to make target language conform to the thinking habits of Chinese if there are no other special requirements, which makes the target language easily to be understood and digested. The sequence iconicity lays theoretical foundation for the word order shift. This thesis is meant give word order shift a linguistic and logical explanation so as to contribute to translation studies and practice.