A Relevance-theoretic Approach To The Translation Of Diplomatic Vague Language

As the intrinsic feature of the natural language, vague language has been playing anincreasingly significant role in the diplomatic stages. For instance, when the diplomatsintend to announce something or answer certain sensitive questions on behalf of thecountry, vagueness would be the best option on some occasions. Vague language can beable to advance the communicative effect by making sentences euphemistic, implicit andflexible. So the utilization of vagueness in diplomacy ensures the smooth development ofdiplomatic issues. A skillful and well-turned vagueness is very important in diplomaticcircumstances, because diplomatic language is mainly closely related to the position andbenefits of the relevant countries. Vagueness in diplomacy can be realized at lexical level,syntactic level and discourse level. And the functions of vagueness in diplomaticlanguage are to enhance the efficiency and power of the statement, to ease the tenseatmosphere, to reveal attitude and preserve benefits, to withhold information and so on.The thesis attempts to analyze the various forms and functions of vagueness in diplomacyand offer proper strategies in light of Relevance Theory.In terms of the Relevance Theory proposed by Sperber&Wilson (2001), there aretwo ostensive-inferential processes during the process of translation, through which theaddressees (readers or hearers) can obtain sufficient contextual information with the leastprocessing efforts. Then the Optimal Relevance is realized through the balance betweenadequate positive cognitive effect and least processing effort. In the first ostensive-inferential process, the translator needs to deduct the information manifested by theaddresser and figure out the communicative intentions of the addresser in contexts. Andthen the translator manages to transmit the intentions to the target addressees in his/herown words. In the second ostensive-inferential process, the translator turns to be anaddresser from the original addressee in the first process. The addressees of targetlanguage connect the information given by the translator with their own contextualassumptions to realize optimal relevance.Under the relevance-theoretic framework, the thesis consists of three parts,including introduction, main body and conclusion.Part One will give a brief introduction to the tentative study, including the studybackground, the previous studies and so on. Some foreign scholars started studying vague language since the1950s. Many of them studied various respects of vaguelanguage in semantic or pragmatic point of view. With the advance of Chinese diplomaticcause, the vague language has been playing an irreplaceable role in diplomacy. Quite afew scholars at home devote themselves into the study of the translation of diplomaticvague language. Relevance Theory has been an important framework for studiesconcerning the diplomatic vague language translation.Part Two is the main body of the thesis with three chapters. The specific theoreticalframework will be presented in Chapter One, including the basic principles of RelevanceTheory and Relevance-Theoretic translation theory. And then Chapter One continues tobriefly introduce the research object—vague language and the functions of vaguelanguage in diplomacy.Chapter Two will deal with the analysis of vagueness in diplomacy from theperspective of Relevance Theory. The typical properties and realization of vaguelanguage in diplomacy will be stated in this chapter at lexical, syntactic and discourselevels. From the lexical level, hedges, deixis and fuzzy words are all the classifications ofvagueness; from the syntactic level, classifications present as negative structures andresemblances; and from the discourse level, vague language is employed in certainpragmatic contexts, while the former two levels are analysis of vagueness from thesemantic point of view. Chapter Two analyzes the characteristics and pragmatic functionsof vague language, which lays the foundation for the translation study of vague languagein Chapter Three.Chapter Three will study types of cases of vagueness interpretation or translation indiplomatic language according to Optimal Relevance. The thesis analyzes and exploresthe corresponding translating approaches with lexicology and syntax involved. From themacro-coping perspective, there are two main methods of translation called “vaguenessto vagueness” and “vagueness to clearness” in terms of different contexts. In diplomaticcontexts, when the addresser adopts vague language deliberately to express certainmeanings or intentions, the translator should try to remain the style of the originallanguage. The “vagueness to vagueness” strategy can be utilized to help transmit both theliteral meaning and implications to the addressees. On some special occasions, thefunction-equivalent corresponding expression cannot be found in the target language, the translator is able to employ the “vagueness to clearness” method to complete thecommunication smoothly.Part Three is the concluding part that makes a brief summary concerning thefindings and limitations of the thesis. The finding is that the “vagueness to vagueness”and “vagueness to clearness” strategy of translation are proposed on the basis of theanalysis of the vague language in diplomacy. The limitations present that the resource ofexamples is almost the press conference; the available strategies are only for the Chinese-English translation and the analysis lack the authority to some extent.