The Default And Compensation Of Designation Translation In Shui Hu Zhuan From The Perspective Of Social Semiotic

The view of social semiotic translation advocates that the similarity in the meaning and equivalence in the function. The meaning can be divided into three meanings, that is, linguistic meaning, designative meaning and pragmatic meaning. The function can be separated into three parts, that is, informative function, expressive function, vocative function, aesthetic function, metalinguistic function as well as the phatic function. In a way, they are supplementary to each other, which means the meaning can express the function, and the function can contain the certain meaning. Shui Hu Zhuan is one of the four ancient classics in China, which attracts a great number of people and their affection. And what interests people most is the designation translation of the figures. It not only represents the characters, interest, and capacity of the certain figure, but also the view of aesthetic and national characteristics of that time. Many scholars have done the relative researches on it from the perspective of linguistics, cross-culture, and relevance theory. However, there is no precious study of default and compensation on designation translation from the view of social semiotic.This thesis tries to find out the default in the translation through the analysis of defaults and equivalences in the two editions of Shui Hu Zhuan from the view of designation, linguistics, pragmatics, information, expression and aesthetics. One is translated by Pearl S. Buck, the other by John Dent-Young. It has provided 35 examples and 108 pairs of source text and target text of designation translation in Shui Hu Zhnan. At the same time it manages to point out the compensation strategies and methods. And finally, it offers the compensation category, level and method for designation according to its own features. It makes some conclusions as follow through the above analysis and explanations:First of all, the default of the meanings is corresponding to the default of functions. The default of designative meaning mainly relies on the aspect of informative reference, for example, the default of polysemy, which is also reflected on the informative function. However, the default of linguistic meaning basically focuses on the figure of speech as well as structure, reflecting on the homonym and structure of syllables, which is represented on the aesthetic function. At the same time, the default of pragmatic meaning possibly shows on the vacancy of cultural phenomenon, focusing on the emotive and cultural vocabulary as well as on the expressive function.What’s more, it should put different emphasis on compensation category, level, and method according to different loss. The author believes that there are three findings for this part.1. For the compensation categories, the designative default belongs to compensation by integration, pragmatic default to compensation by isolation, and linguistic default to compensation with the same device and compensation with a different device.2. It can be focused on the language, culture, and aesthetics for the level of compensation.3. As for compensation methods, it is supposed that different methods should be chosen for various defaults. For instance, designative default could be compensated by domestication, creation, and traceability. While linguistic default could be supplemented through omission, generalization, and paraphrase. And pragmatic default can be realized by literal translation with annotation, specification and so on.