Proposition: A Semantic Perspective On Translation Unit

Proposition,a meaning-based concept,is firstly appeared in logic field,and then is further applied to the study of philosophy,psychology and linguistics.Proposition is the smallest unit in communication.It is the deep semantic structure of a language and is universal in all languages which makes the communication between languages possible.However,there are few scholars applying this concept into translation study.With the decrease influence of Structuralism,more and more scholars turn to the study of language meaning in 1960 s,and semantic meaning is a heat topic in linguistic field.As a key concept in semantics,proposition begins to arouse scholars? interest widely.More and more translators take proposition as translation unit to solve translation problems in order to achieve semantic equivalence between SL and TL.Regarding proposition as translation unit,this thesis hopes to explore translation steps in terms of incongruence between semantic and syntactic structures,by extracting,analyzing,and regrouping propositions to achieve semantic equivalence between SL and TL.Based on Larson's study of proposition,this thesis mainly focuses on the study on Engish-Chinese translation steps in terms of incongruence between semantic and syntactic structures from sentence level,hoping to find a way to achieve equivalence between the two structures.Incongruence are various in kind,and four types are mainly discussed in this thesis,namely,NP structure,circumstantial elements as subject,transferred epithet and embedded propositions,hoping to find the appropriate translation steps when translation problems are caused by incongruence.Taking proposition as translation unit helps translators solve translation problems caused by incongruence between semantic and syntactic structures,which finally helps translators have a better understanding of the semantic meaning in SL,and further helps them express it in a natural and clear way in TL.All in all,this thesis is a proposition-based translation unit study under that could help translators analyze and understand the SL better,and better solve translation problems caused by the incongruence between semantic and syntactic structures,hoping it could make a contribution to the translation study.