基于关联理论的语用翻译单位探究

发布时间：2016-07-07 08:43

Chapter One Introduction

An  increasing  number  of  scholars  try  to  find  out  more  about  better  ways  as guidelines for translation, with which translation is studied more easily, taught more reasonably  and  criticized more  convincingly. Why  bother with pragmatic translation unit? Because finding translation unit and probing into its pragmatic meaning to solve translation  problems  is  a  useful  approach  to  tackling  problems  during  translation process in one way or another.   

1.1 Research Background 
To find answers to many underlying questions surrounding translation needs the help  of  linguistic  knowledge,  which  is  used  to  study  translation  by  many  accredited scholars. And the development of translation studies depends on that of linguistics to some extent. And pragmatics, which has got many achievements in recent years, acts as one of the providers of theoretical base for translation, language teaching, language research,  interpersonal  communication  and  many  other  disciplines.  In  fact,  many pragmatic research results make contributions to the explaQYH nation of translation phenomena.  As  a  part  of  pragmatics,  relevance  theory,  which  is  put  forward  by Sperber and Wilson (1986), together with relevance theoretical approach to translation developed by Gutt (1991) in his work of Translation and Relevance: Cognition and Context,  is  helpful  in  the  recognition  and  understanding  of  translation  problems. Therefore, relevance theory is chosen to solve translation problems. And translation unit, the value of which is that it is the provider for an approach to tackling translation obstacles (Xu, 2004), is studied by many scholars. For example, from grammatical and semantic perspectives, translation unit is defined according to the  semantic  meaning  of  source  text  in  the  process  of  rendering  information (Barkhudarov,  1985).  However,  due  to  complicated  factors  affecting  translation process, there is a far way to go in order to use translation unit to resolve translation problems  effectively  or  to  explain  translation  phenomena  reasonably.  Among  many researches on translation unit, fewer discussions are done on the establishment of it. 
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1.2 Significance 
This thesis takes relevance theory as theoretical base for translation unit studies.  Translation unit is studied by many scholars from different perspectives because of its complexity in definition. With a detailed account of the concepts of pragmatic translation  unit,  the  thesis  enriches  the  studies  on  translation  unit,  which  is  a  try  to know  more  about  the  mechanism  of  applying  pragmatic  translation  unit  to  solve translation problems. It centers on helping the translator to do better under intratextual and extratextual context by inference to get optimal relevance. To state more clearly, a definition  of  pragmatic  translation  unit  is  put  forward,  together  with  the  ranks, principles, identification and nature of it. The procedures and translation methods in using pragmatic translation unit endow it with a practical way in order to shed some light on the application of pragmatic translation unit. The thesis evokes readers’ awareness of the connection between translation unit and  pragmatic  relation.  And  pragmatic  translation  unit  is  used  as  a  new  term  for translation  unit  studies.  To  bridge  the  gap  between  translation  unit  and  pragmatic relation  under  the  framework  of  relevance  theory  is  rarely  seen  in  translation  unit studies,  which  is  of  great  significance  for  translation.  Besides,  the  research strengthens interdisciplinary study as well.  
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Chapter Two Literature Review 

To present research status of the study on translation unit and to provide theoretical framework for the pragmatic approaches to it, an account of what has been published on translation unit and relevance theory by accredited scholars and researchers are discussed. A brief introduction to relevance theory is also made in the following parts. 

2.1 Studies on Translation Unit 
As the basic unit for explaining and processing translation problems, translation unit has exerted great influences on the comprehension of translation. Many researches have done to find out reasonable ways to defining translation unit and to know its application by  scholars  and  translators.  The  study  on  translation  unit  intrigues  many  scholars’ interests, which is a critical point in translator’s decision-making. Research done for translation unit is summarized as follows. Sparkling  thoughts  are  offered  by  scholars  from  many  countries  on  the  study  of translation unit. A  representative  person  in  translation  unit  studies  is  prestigious  linguistician Barkhudarov  (1985)  from  former  Soviet  Union.  He  regards  translation  unit  as  “the smallest unit that has its equivalent in the target language text” in the book of Language and  Translation,  which  exerts  great  influences  upon  translation  unit  studies  and  is accepted  by  many  translators.  (Wang,  2010)  Barkhudarov’s  study  is  done  under  the background  of  the  existence  of  two  schools  of  translation  theory  in  the  Soviet  Union, which are linguistic school and art school (Cai, 1983).
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2.2 Studies on Relevance Theory 
Relevance  theory  is  one  of  the  three  theories  in  pragmatics.  The  other  two  are adaption theory and meme theory (Liu, 2008). Relevance theory has given a more precise definition of communication, by  combining decoding and inferential processes together, thus providing a general framework for the pragmatic interpretation of communication. It has broadened the research scope of traditional pragmatics to a more open one. Therefore, relevance  theory  is  chosen  to  be  the  provider  for  theoretical  base  in  the  analysis  of pragmatic translation unit. In 1986, relevance theory was proposed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson in their book  of  Relevance:  Cognition  and  Communication,  which  has  great  influences  on linguistics. It supplies explanation of linguistic communication from aspects of linguistic philosophy,  intercommunication  and  cognitive  psychology,  which  bands  cognition  and pragmatics  together.  The  keystone  of  pragmatics  is  transferred  from  the  output  of utterance  to  the  understanding  of  utterance  with  relevance  theory.  It  indicates  that linguistic communication is an ostensive-inferential cognitive process and to understand utterance is a kind of cognitive activity. (Zhang, 2013) After  the  proposal  of  relevance  theory  in  1980s,  some  scholars  combine  it  with translation. For example, Kovacic (2000) does researches on “subtitling reduction” with the factor of relevance. However, compared to these researches, Gutt’s contributions are relatively greater. Ernst-August Gutt’s paper——Translation and Relevance, combines translation with relevance theory, which shows its great powerin explaining translation phenomenon. He says  that  “an  account  of  translation  as  interlingual  interpretive  has  much  to  commend”, which  sheds  new  light  on  pragmatic  approaches  to  translation  studies  in  the comprehension of translation phenomena. He expands the scope of relevance theory. 
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Chapter Three Pragmatic Relation Based Translation Unit Analyses .......... 19 
3.1 Definition of Pragmatic Translation Unit .......... 19 
3.2 Ranks of Pragmatic Translation Unit ......... 26 
3.3 Principles of Pragmatic Translation Unit .......... 29 
3.4 Identification of Pragmatic Translation Unit ..... 31 
3.5 Nature of Pragmatic Translation Unit ........ 32 
Chapter Four Comparison Between Pragmatic and Semantic Translation Units ........ 36 
4.1 Pragmatic Relation and Semantic Relation ....... 36 
4.2 Pragmatic Translation Unit and Semantic Translation Unit .......... 37 
Chapter Five Pragmatic Translation Unit in Its Application .... 40 
5.1 Procedures of Using Pragmatic Translation Unit ..... 40 
5.2 Translation Methods in Terms of Pragmatic Translation Unit ...... 43 

Chapter Five Pragmatic Translation Unit in Its Application

Pragmatic translation unit needs to be tested on a range of translation examples, in order  to  reveal  the  decision-making  processes  using  pragmatic  translation  unit  to  solve translation problems. Examples are taken from pragmatic texts, which means that there is a need to analyze in terms of pragmatic translation unit. The pragmatic  text here is any text  that  is  of  generally  immediate,  short-term  use.  It  is  designed  for  particular  target audience,  written  under  specific  circumstances.  In  this  way,  a  large  amount  of  texts  are classified  into  pragmatic  texts.  From  translation  materials,  many  forms  of  literature, including  advertisements,  public  signs  and  explanation  for  illustrations,  are  in  need  of pragmatic  translation  unit  in  many  cases.  From  the  perspective  of  figure  of  speeches, some  translation  with  such  tact,  like  euphemism  and  association,  depends  on  their pragmatic relation as well. Before analyses of translation cases, procedures of using pragmatic translation unit are stated step by step. 

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Conclusion 

This thesis is an attempt to investigate translation unit based on pragmatic relation. From the researches above, some research results that are related to pragmatic translation unit are found to be useful in study.Based on relevance theory, this thesis has tentatively given a detailed explanation to pragmatic translation unit and give answers to the questions in Chapter One. Firstly,  what  is  pragmatic  translation  unit?  An  attempt  to  define  pragmatic translation unit leads to the conclusion that it is a smallest translation segment of source text,  a  single  element  or  a  group  of  elements  in  which  are  linked  by  semantic  and pragmatic  relation,  which  the  translator  treats  as  a  single  cognitive  unit  in  establishing functional  equivalence,  in  order  to  solve  a  translation  problem.  To  find  and  express accurate  semantic  and  pragmatic  relations  by  getting  enough  pragmatic  information, without  paying  attention  to  redundant  information,  is  the  basic  principle  of  pragmatic translation unit. Secondly,  cognitive context and pragmatic  relation affect translation unit in use by providing premises for readers to know what exactly is going on in source text based on optimal relevance. From the comparison between pragmatic translation unit and semantic translation unit, it is known that before using pragmatic translation unit, basic meanings and conventional meanings are recognized and comprehended correctly. And what differs pragmatic translation unit from semantic translation unit is whether the translator gets rid of the literal meaning reasonably or not.  
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