The Application Of The Socio-Semiotic Approach To Translation In The E-C Translation Of Mark Haddon’s "The Gun"

The socio-semiotic theory of translation emerged in the late 1980’s. It studies translation from the perspective of socio-semiotics while drawing upon the merits of the linguistic and the communicative approaches to translation. The theory has been constantly improved by scholars at home and abroad throughout its development. Eugene Nida considered it the most holistic and widely applicable theory of translation.This thesis reports the process in which the author translated Mark Haddon’s short story "The Gun" under the guidance of the socio-semiotic theory of translation. It recapitulates how the author resolved the problems she encountered in the translation process, and discusses the role the socio-semiotic theory of translation can play in guiding the translation of English short stories into Chinese.The author followed the socio-semiotic principle of translation throughout the process of translating the original text. In order to obtain equivalence between the source and target texts, the author managed to fully understand all the meanings of the source text before rendering them into the target language by using such translation methods as contextual amplification, shift of perspective, specification, generalization, paraphrase etc. In the commentary, the author introduces the socio-semiotic theory, the approach to socio-semiotic translation and the three groups of meaning (referential meaning, intralingual meaning, and pragmatic meaning) identified by socio-semioticians, as well as the socio-semiotic principle of translation. Then the author categorizes the problems she encountered in translating the source text according to which of the three types of socio-semiotic meaning they are primarily related to, and uses examples to illustrate major ways of resolving those problems.The socio-semiotic theory of translation reveals the nature of translation and puts forward applicable translation principles and methods, so it can help to improve the quality of translation. The three types of meaning as distinguished by the socio-semiotic theory of translation incorporate the maximum number of meanings the translator may possibly have to deal with. By adopting the socio-semiotic approach to translation, the translator only needs to focus on transferring the greatest possible number of meanings of the source text to target text. Even though sometimes the translator may not be able to transfer all the meanings of the source text, she should still ensure that the most important meaning or meanings of the source expressions are communicated to the target recipients.It is hopeful that this thesis will contribute in some way to the study of literary translation from English into Chinese...