A Sociosemiotic Approach To Yang Bi’s E-C Translation Of Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero is a world-famous novel of critical realism by William Makepeace Thackeray(1811-1863), a distinguished English novelist in the 19 th century. Yang Bi(1922-1968), a famous Chinese translator, translated this novel successfully. Her translated version has been highly praised and appreciated in the Chinese translation circle since its publication in 1957. This thesis tries to analyze Yang Bi’s Chinese version of Vanity Fair from the perspective of sociosemiotics. It analyzes how Yang Bi faithfully and effectively transferred into Chinese the referential, linguistic and pragmatic meanings of this novel and reproduced the intended expressive, informative, vocative, aesthetic, phatic and metalingual functions in her Chinese version.The thesis first introduces the origin and development of sociosemiotics. Then it expounds the translation criterion put forward on the basis of sociosemiotics, namely, “correspondence in meaning and similarity in function”. It also discusses the meanings and functions of language signs from the perspective of sociosemiotics. According to this theory, meanings of language signs can be classified into three categories: referential meaning, linguistic meaning and pragmatic meaning. Referential meaning refers to meanings built on the relation of signs to their referents. Linguistic meaning refers to meanings produced by the relation of signs to each other within the same sign system. Pragmatic meanings are meanings built on the relation of signs to the interpreters who use the signs. These three types of meanings can convey expressive, informative, vocative, aesthetic, phatic and metalingual functions.After clarifying the meanings and functions of language signs, the thesis analyzes the language features of Vanity Fair and the translation features of Yang Bi’s Chinese version. Then it gives a brief summary of the previous studies on Yang Bi’s version of Vanity Fair, pointing out the necessity and feasibility of studying Yang Bi’s version of Vanity Fair from the perspective of sociosemiotics. In Vanity Fair, there are plenty of vague language and long sentences; the novel also contains many figures of speech like pun, metaphor or simile and irony. Yang Bi skillfully handled these language features with translation approaches like conversion of voices and that of parts of speech, amplification and omission, rearangement of sentence order, and appropriate use of four-character phrases.With the language features of Vanity Fair in view and from the perspective of sociosemiotics, the thesis further analyzes and explores Yang Bi’s faithful transference of the referential, linguistic and pragmatic meanings of the novel in her Chinese version. In terms of referential meanings, Yang Bi skillfully adopted literal translation, free translation and transliteration with annotation to handle such cases as full correspondence, partial correspondence or non-correspondence between English and Chinese; and she succeeded in transferring the meanings and functions of the original language signs into the target language. As for the transference of linguistic meanings, Yang’s translation has generally achieved correspondence in meaning and similarity in function while loss of certain functions reflects the diversities between two different language sign systems and in some degree the untranslatability of some linguistic meanings. Pragmatic meanings are closely related to such factors as society, culture, emotion and register. Having these factors in consideration and based on a thorough understanding of the original text, Yang Bi gave an excellent reproduction of the pragmatic meanings(including indexical, expressive, social, imperative and associative meanings); and their main relevant functions were also effectively conveyed in her translation.To sum up, Yang Bi’s version of Vanity Fair not only faithfully conveys the meanings of the original novel, but also effectively reproduces the easy, humorous and satirical style reflected in the novel. All this makes it a classical translated version.