（外国语言学及应用语言学专业论文）从语用角度探究模糊限制语的翻译.pdf

重庆大学硕士学位论文 中文摘要 i 摘 要 语言表达清晰和精确应是语言使用者所追求的理想境界但模糊语言在整个 语言使用中俯拾皆是很少有人会说他们可以非常精确地用话语或文字来表达自 己的想法在大多数情况下我们对于自己脑中或周围的事物在概念上只是一个 模糊或相对模糊的轮廓人类语言本身就具有模糊性而本文则主要研究并论述 了模糊语言中最普通最典型的一个部分即模糊限制语模糊限制语原本是个 语义范畴的概念但近年来研究的热点转移到了语用角度从语用意义上讲当 模糊限制语和某个命题相连时它往往被看作是传递命题产出者内在态度或看法 的一种稳妥策略同时使用模糊限制语也常被认为是赢得交往对象互相间信任 或尊重的社会交往方式之一 翻译作为一项跨文化的交际活动常常需要兼顾并慎重考虑两种语言背景下 使用者的真实意图或目的这对于正确理解源语并将其恰当表达成目的语有着重 要的作用在涉及到模糊限制语翻译时对其语用功能的正确理解和分析就显得 尤其重要本文的研究主要是对模糊限制语的语用功能在翻译环境下进行详细的 分析和讨论同时选取几个典型的文本类型对模糊限制语的翻译进行语用角度的 阐释和探讨本文认为语用学理论中的会话含义合作原则和礼貌原则可以分 别从不同角度对模糊限制语的翻译研究进行理论指导而在翻译实践中仍然可 以从对等和非对等两种情况具体分析模糊限制语的语用功能 文章在最后总结时提出语用功能是探讨模糊限制语翻译的一种手段在不 断地对其语用功能进行分析时还可以在以后的研究中进一步考虑模糊限制语的 社会功能即说话者的性别社会地位以及职业等因素的影响 关键词模糊限制语语用翻译 重庆大学硕士学位论文 abstract ii abstract the phenomenon of fuzziness has been very frequently seen in language use, although people have always pursued the accuracy and clarity of their expression. in most cases, we just have a fuzzy or certain of comparatively fuzzy cognition of the concept in our minds or in external world. as we know, humans language owns fuzziness in itself. in this paper, we mainly discuss the most common and typical part in fuzzy language, that is, hedges. this concept originally belongs to the study of the category of semantics, while it has shifted to the one of pragmatics in recent years. from the pragmatic viewpoint, the use of hedges is a kind of device to reflect the internal attitude or idea of the speaker or writer, and meanwhile win respect or trust from the corresponding parts as a good social interacting manner. translation, as a cross-cultural activity, needs to consider more the real intention or purpose of the original user under the two different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. dealing with the translation of hedges, the correct understanding and analysis of their pragmatic functions would play an important role. the research of this paper aims to perform discussion and analysis for the pragmatic functions of hedges in translation; exploring and interpreting the actual translation of hedges in several typical texts, such as spoken discourse, literary language and sci-tech texts, from a pragmatic perspective. at last, the author concludes that the relevant pragmatic theories can guide and help the translation of hedges from different angles. meanwhile, in practice of translation, we can still analyze the pragmatic functions of hedges with two cases, namely, equivalence and non-equivalence. in conclusion, the author promotes that the research of the pragmatic functions of hedges is an effective approach in their translation study. besides, some social factors like the speakers gender, social status, occupation, etc. can also be taken into consideration in futures relevant study. key words: hedges, pragmatic, translation 重庆大学硕士学位论文 chapter one introduction 1 chapter one introduction 1.1 background to my study people have many beliefs about the accuracy of language, while as a matter of fact, language more often than not demonstrates its feature of inaccuracy in daily communication. in humans language, many words and expressions with apparently precise meaning or definition often express uncertain concepts, which suggest an inherent linguistic characteristic of language, that is, fuzziness. fuzziness refers to the indeterminacy or referential indefiniteness in natural language, which has been found to occur widely in language use. against what people think, the skillful use of fuzzy language sometimes helps bring about special effects in communication or written works instead of uncertainty or vagueness. and one thing we should be aware of is that it is one of the ways for many writers to demonstrate their competence by using fuzzy language. not only in the field of literature, interest in fuzziness in language use and meaning has arisen in a number of disciplines, such as psychology, philosophy, mathematics, literary criticism and translation in particular. in the study of fuzzy language, hedges appear as the most common and typical phenomenon in such relevant research, which was firstly presented by g. lakoff in 1972, who gives his famous definition for hedges, namely, the words whose job is to make things fuzzier, and points out that hedges can indicate speakers subjective presumption for the utterances content, advance the objective evidence, make indirect evaluation for the utterance, and modify the truth value or involved content of the utterance. following lakoff, more scholars and linguists have paid attention to the research of hedges, including those in china. in early study of hedges, researchers have concerned more about the semantic features of hedges, namely, exploring the original meaning of words and sentences, or the cognitive meaning of linguistics. the research concerns the four semantic features, namely, cancellability, indefiniteness, indirectness and markedness. in modern relevant research, linguists have tended to pay more attention to the pragmatic study of hedges in real context, in terms of the conversational implicature, co-operative and politeness principles, etc., which can help people better understand the original meaning in source language and express it in the target one. of course, in the process of translation, as a way of communication between different languages, the study of hedges from a 重庆大学硕士学位论文 chapter one introduction 2 pragmatic viewpoint will play an active role in the relevant research. in this paper, the author will analyze the actual pragmatic functions of hedges in communication in light of the conversational implicature, co-operative and politeness principles, to provide insights into the pratical translation of hedges in several typical texts, such as spoken discourse, literary works and sci-tech text from the pragmatic viewpoint. 1.2 framework of the dissertation the first chapter serves as a brief introduction of the background study and framework of this paper. the second chapter will offer a review on the study of fuzzy language and hedges in linguistic history, including the definition, characteristics and classifications of fuzzy language and hedges, as well as the relevant study in china. the third chapter mainly discusses the fuzziness in the field of translation in such aspects as criteria, processes of understanding and expression. the following two chapters, namely, chapter four and five, are the main body of this dissertation, which analyze the pragmatic functions of hedges and their actual translating operation in several typical texts, including spoken, literary and sci-tech genres. in these two chapters, the author points out that the pragmatic approach should be paid more attention to in the study of translation of hedges, and offers adequate evidence to illustrate the position. then in chapter six, a further discussion about the phenomena of equivalence and non-equivalence in the translation of hedges is focused on the pragmatic research of hedges in this paper. at last, the author makes the conclusion in chapter seven to sum up the main study of this dissertation and present other possible ways for futures discussion. 重庆大学硕士学位论文 chapter three the fuzziness in translation 17 chapter three the fuzziness in translation as we mentioned in the second chapter, fuzziness is prevalent in all language forms, including words, sentences and discourse. in another word, in the whole process of translation, we can find problems caused by fuzziness everywhere. as a result, the adequate research on fuzziness in translation will play great role in most aspects of this discipline, including the analysis of its criteria, the processes of understanding of the source language and expression with the target language. in this chapter, the main study focuses on these three parts respectively. 3.1 the fuzziness in translation criteria in the field of translation, many scholars have presented different criteria to evaluate the quality of translation products. but for criteria themselves, especially for their connotation and extension, there still have existed fuzziness. in china, yan fu, who was the pioneer to propose a most influential translation theory, formulated his famous three-word principle of translation, namely, faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance, which has been considered the core theory and creed of traditional chinese translation. while in fact, yan fu hadnt offered any accurate definition for these three principles, even for the relations among of them. as a result, controversies have never subsided about the triple principle with more and more followers searching new meanings for yan fus theory. lets take faithfulness as an example. if we say that the translators should be faithful, a number of questions will pop up, that is, faithful to whom? to the author, the readers, the work, or even the translator himself? to the author, maybe some other questions appearsuch as where is the author? whether does he have ultimate rights to interpret the original work? and whether would we sort out all what the author wants to show? if to the readers, we will ask what kind of readers we should choose, the common ones or the ideal ones. as walter benjamin stated in his the task of the translator in 1992, in the appreciation of a work of art or an art form, consideration of the receiver never proves fruitful. not only is any reference to a certain public or its representatives misleading, but even the concept of an ideal receiver is detrimental in the theoretical consideration of art, since all it 重庆大学硕士学位论文 chapter three the fuzziness in translation 18 posits is the existence and nature of man as such. nor poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener. to the original work, there would be much more undeterminable factors such as the form, the meaning or the function of the work. if faithful to the translator himself, maybe the fuzziness would make things worse. because if any translator follows his or her own will and ideas to perform the operation of translation without any consideration of the source and target languages, the translators work could be changed into “rewriting” or “creating” instead of “translation”. on the other hand, if we want to be faithful to all the above four participants of the translating process, the task would be rendered difficult and impossible, for all the four have been fighting against each other all the time. as professor bao huinan states (1983), “the faithfulness of a translator is a multi-faced one. he should be responsible to the author, as well as the readers and the original work. they are certainly not the same thing and they are usually hard to coordinate.” however, scholars have focused more on the problem, that is, which one of the four componentsthe author, the readers, the original work and the translator, should get priority over others and what aspect of it deserves more attention. as humboldt (1992) advances that there would be a paradox for seeking after faithfulness, it can even be argued that the more a translator strives toward fidelity, the more it ultimately deviates from the original, for in attempting to imitate refined nuances and avoid simple generalities it can, in fact, only provide new and different nuances. in fact, the concept of faithfulness is the basis for many influential criteria in translation theory, and every scholar has fully realized that an absolute faithfulness is only an ideal, so they have always put hedges before it, such as “the closest, the most possible, similar, dynamic” etc. which provide linguistic evidence that faithfulness is a fuzzy concept itself. in western countries, there have been also many kinds of criteria for translation and one word has captured great attention, that is, equivalent. “equivalent” itself is a precise concept, which means something being equal to something else. for example, there is a proposition like “five is the equivalent of two plus three” that can be judged by the traditional two-valued logic. that is to say, this proposition is either true or false, 重庆大学硕士学位论文 chapter three the fuzziness in translation 19 without a third judgment being reasonable and acceptable. but to nidas criterion (1969), two adjectives are added to the word “equivalent”, which has become the most well-known and influential definition and criterion of translation, “translating consists in reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source language message, first in terms of meaning and second in terms of style.” for nidas narration, there is no clear-cut limit between close and far, as well as natural and unnatural. actually the boundaries between “close”, “closer”, “much closer” and “closest” are rather fuzzy, and it is also the same case as to natural and unnatural. in another word, the ranges between the two ends can be divided into innumerable smaller fuzzy segments. maybe we can ask: where is the closest point? what is the actual standard? can we determine such a point? from the theoretical angle, it seems possible, while in reality, people cannot make everything perfect, and the answers to the questions above would be unnecessary and impractical. so reasonably speaking, if there is the existence of such standard of “the closest natural equivalent” in translation, it does not mean to be perfect, but rather to be good enough. this reveals the inherent nature of fuzziness both in reality and its linguistic expression of the translation criteria. 3.2 the fuzziness in the process of understanding 3.2.1 the fuzziness in understanding caused by mode of thinking as we know, there are two stages of process in translation, namely, understanding and expression, in which the understanding of the source language involves some particular and complicated ways of thinking, which constitute the basis of the action of translation. yan weisheng (1989) presents that the fundamental point of translation is to analyze the logic of some given context, no matter whether it is for common linguistic phenomena or fuzzy ones, where thinking is the crucial factor. in the long history of humans development, the thinking ability or ideation has behaved in respect of both accuracy and fuzziness. from fuzzy to accurate, and to fuzzy again, such kind of cognitive development has actually improved humans cognition power for the external world. as a result, the fuzziness of thinking can be used to analyze and integrate all kinds of complicated linguistic phenomena to achieve the accurate cognition and understanding of the source language. on the other hand, the understanding before translation is also a process of reading of the original version with thinking, and a process of choosing the appropriate meaning from many interpretations and collocations. in this kind of process, the advantages of agility and generalization of fuzzy thinking 重庆大学硕士学位论文 chapter three the fuzziness in translation 20 mode can be brought into play completely, which would offer the comprehensive analysis for the original language from semantic, contextual and pragmatic points, leading to catch the real meaning of the source texts. lets see the following dialogue as an example. a: whos next? what is your name? b: nineteen eighty-one. a: reason for leaving job? b: i was replaced by a new year. a: and so your applying for unemployment insurance? b: i have tried to find work but no one will have me. a: why not? b: no one will tell me the reason. they just say im too old and i cant keep up. a: what did you do before you were fired? b: i was a crisis manager. 汪滔2002论口译的跨文化语用失误中国科技翻译 in this dialogue, if we only analyze the literal meaning of the language, maybe we couldnt get a correct understanding of the original version, because all the answers seem to be not corresponding to the questions and the readers feel fuzzy in all words without any background knowledge. but if we apply the outstanding features of fuzzy thinking mode, that is, the agility and generalization, to make comprehensive analysis of the source language and catch the writing purpose and standpoint of the author in terms of all factors that affect fuzzy thinking, we will come to see that the language of the dialogue belongs to spoken one and appears to mock at the depression of western economy in 1980 with humor. in another word, the fuzziness in understanding caused by the mode of thinking of another language has approximately realized in the target language. so we offer the translation as follows: 下一位请进叫什么名字 1981 失业原因 让新一年顶替了 因此你来申请失业保险金 我找过工作但没人雇我 为什么 没人告诉我原因是什么他们只是说我上了年纪跟不上趟了 重庆大学硕士学位论文 chapter three the fuzziness in translation 21 你被解雇前是干什么的 我主管危机 3.2.2 the fuzziness in understanding caused by cultural difference many scholars have proved that the fuzziness of language is affected by many other non-linguistic factors. we can say that language is the carrier of culture, also the reflection of culture that underlies the language. hu wenzhong (1999) says that there hasnt any culture without language, and vice versa. in real world, culture has played a great role in language development, including the aspects of lexical properties and usage, grammar, textual construction, style and so on. similar cultures share close linguistic features and information, while different ones will produce cultural difference and extra-linguistic gulf in the process of translation between the source and target languages. for example, in chinese-english translation of the sentence “在现代城市生活中 街道妇女为城区的安全与稳定作出了很大的贡献”, in which “街道妇女”