On Translation Of The Joy Luck Club From The Perspectives Of Paradigmatic Relations And Syntagmatic Relations

Scholars of the linguistic turn of translation studies such as Eugene A. Nida, Peter Newmark and John Catford believed that linguistic methods could help the translator obtain equivalence in translation. Therefore this article tried to criticize the translation of The Joy Luck Club from the perspectives of paradigmatic relations and syntagmatic relations, which were the two basic kinds of sense relations, and to explore their usage in translation practice. Concepts and methods of paradigmatic relations, syntagmatic relations, assimilation effect, componential analysis and others would be used in the study.Specifically, based on linguistic foundation as well as standards and principles of translation, the thesis went deeply into the following questions. A. What are the similarities and differences between English and Chinese sense relations? And could these comparisons benefit the understanding of the differences between Chinese and Western cultures? B. What are the characteristics of the vocabulary in The Joy Luck Club? And how did the translators deal with the cultural differences? C. What are the advantages of application of sense relations to translation practice and criticism?To apply the concept of sense relations to the study, the following methods and tools were taken. Firstly, it is deductive method. Through literature research, the paper first of all raised a hypothesis that the application of the concept of sense relations to translation practice helped the translator do the work of semantic analysis, catch an accurate understanding of the original text and then choose appropriate translation of the expression. Secondly, it is qualitative analysis. Due to the limitations of not much research on this topic at home and abroad as well as a lack of strong theoretical support and preliminary studies, relevant concepts seemed immature; therefore a lot of research in this article must be based on first-hand materials and information, and insights into the study could only be gained through analysis of data in details. Lastly, it is descriptive study. The purpose of translation study is neither to guide translation practice simply nor to set standards, but to describe and understand existing translation phenomena better, so this article started from existing phenomena, described the translation activities, and further did criticism and evaluation.The study came to the conclusion as follows. Firstly, there were both grammatical and semantic relationships between words in a text or context, including paradigmatic relations and syntagmatic relations, while the latter might bring assimilation of word meanings. When the meaning of one word is changed, semantic relationship of the whole text may also change. Secondly, criticism of the translation of the novel The Joy Luck Club from different aspects enabled the author to find that in most cases, the translator could take fully into account semantic analysis of the original text, especially the culture-loaded words, but sometimes translation had lost some meanings and characteristics of the original text, such as expressive effects of some synonyms and antonyms. Lastly, in translation practice, the concept of sense relations could help the translator correctly understand meanings and forms of the original text; while as for translation criticism, the concept of sense relations can be used to describe translation acts, and thus comment on the translated text.