Translating The Referential Meaning Of Lexical Items In Literary Texts

Translating consists in reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source language message, first in terms of meaning, and secondly in terms of style. According to sociosemiotics, the meaning of linguistic signs is of three categories:referential meaning, intralingual meaning and pragmatic meaning. Referential meaning is the relationship between a symbol and the thing the symbol indicates. One of the basic requirements of translation is the accurate reproduction in the receptor language of the referential meaning of the original.From the perspective of sociosemiotics, translation means transferring meaning from one semiotic system to another, which is essentially a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic communicative activity, involving specific communicative setting, verbal contexts, and related socio-cultural factors. According to sociosemiotics, the meanings of linguistic signs can not be divorced from the communicative context in which they appear. Context covers both linguistic and non-linguistic aspects.The referential meaning of lexical items may overlap but never equals to their literal meaning. The present author discusses the important role that linguistic and non-linguistic contexts play in helping the translator to determine the exact referential meaning of source expressions and illustrate with examples from the translation project that the same linguistic sign may have different referential meanings in different contexts and that social and cultural background may also affect the comprehension and translation of referential meanings of source lexical items.Based on the sociosemiotic observation on and analysis of the examples from the translation project, the thesis concludes:(1) the equivalence between the original and the translation in terms of referential meaning should be understood as a relationship between linguistic signs and the things they indicate or refer to instead of the correspondence between the literal meaning of the source expression and that of its supposed translation; (2) in order to translate the referential meaning of source expressions accurately, the translator must take full account of the communicative settings and verbal contexts in which these expressions are used and the socio-cultural factors these expressions are related to.