Delving For Meanings And Sorting Them Out

The traditional description of translation as a process of comprehending the source text and then expressing it in the target language, is widely accepted but to a certain degree ambiguous. It does not provide enough guidance for the translator and fails to give a workable criterion for assessing the quality of the translator’s work."Translating means translating meaning." But the meaning of the source text is more often than not more complicated than it looks. The true meaning tends to lie behind the words, between the lines and beyond the page, making translation really hard work.According to semiotic theories, the meaning of language falls under three categories: designative meaning, linguistic meaning and pragmatic meaning. This gives the translator a clear understanding of what to do in translation-to delve for the different sorts of meanings the source text aims to deliver and then try best to put them into the target language. Therefore, from the semiotic perspective, the process of translation is actually one of delving for possible meanings and sorting them out. In such a process, the translator needs first to be aware of the possible complexity of the source text in terms of meaning and have the willingness to delve hard for the meanings in the source text,and second to try hard to sort them out with a view to putting these meanings into the target language.This thesis expounds on how the author delved for and sorted out meanings when translating the book Cousin Phillis under the guidance of semiotic theories and how the following Chinese version of the book was produced.