The Application Of Neo-gricean Pragmatic Apparatus To The Translation Of Conversations In Literary Works

On the basis of Grice’s conversational implicature and CooperativePrinciple (CP), Stephen C. Levinson revised and improved CP and proposedQ(uantity)-principle, I(nformativeness)-principle and M(anner)-principle, which hecalled Neo-Gricean Pragmatic Apparatus. Levinson’s QIM principles lay down codesfor both the speaker and the hearer and thus conduce to understanding the intention ofinterlocutors, which helps to understand the relationships among characters and theirpersonality in reading novels. The paper attempts to explore the application ofLevinson’s conceptions to the translation of conversations between characters inliterary works with examples extracted from the translation of George Saunders’ Tenthof December.