On The Game-Theoretic Analysis In Ambiguity Translation

Game Theory is a branch of Applied Mathematics, investigating whether there is any optimal strategy for each game player and how to find it out. It attempts to mathematically capture the behaviors in strategic situations, or games, in which an individual's success in making choices depends on the choices of others. Actually, the thought of game already existed in ancient times, Sun Zi's Art of War might be the first monograph on games. In the middle of 20th, language philosopher Wittgenstein proposed the idea of Language Game, at the meantime, he compared the process of translation with a game. From then on, Game Theory catches the attention of linguistics and translation scholars.Basing on the assumption that the players are rational enough, Game Theory holds that the players would take a series of strategies which would be assigned payoffs, and the players would maximize the payoffs. After reading the works or papers on translation game, we find that most of them discuss the issue generally, without specifications on the process of translation. This thesis, on the basis of Game Theory, tries to analyze the translator's process of translation. By assessing and analyzing the essence of translation, we know that translation works as a rational communication. With ambiguity translation as our case, this thesis gets the following findings after game-theoretical analysis:a:By analyzing the strategies of the author and the translator, we find that both of them have different strategies in writing and interpretation. If the players can not increase the payoffs by changing their strategy unilaterally, then the translation game gets a "Nash Equilibrium". In the most general case, the "Nash Equilibrium" means that the translation game has its highest payoff. In the case of ambiguity translation, there exist two "Nash Equilibrium". Therefore, we have to resort to the concept of Pareto Optimality to eliminate the strategy with lower payoff. The "Nash Equilibrium" with the higher payoff will be the optimal strategy of interpretation in translation game. By calculating the payoff of each strategy, it proves that the "Nash Equilibrium" with the higher payoff, i.e., the Pareto Optimal strategy, is the one with the highest payoff among all the strategies.b:After the strategic interpretation the original, the translator comes to transform the original. When transforming, both the author and the translator would gain relative payoffs. "Nash Equilibrium", which gain the highest interpretation payoff, should also get the highest transformation payoff in principle. But in this case of ambiguity, it turns out that the Pareto Optimal strategy gains the highest interpretation payoff, therefore, it should gain the highest transformation payoff as well. By calculating the transformation payoff of each, it proves that the Pareto Optimal strategy is the one with the highest transformation payoff among all the strategies.c:This thesis holds that the value of translation equals to the payoff of interpretation plus the payoff of transformation. By adding the payoff of each strategic interpretation with the payoff of its transformation, we would get the value of the translation. The highest-valued translation would be the exact translation of original. In this case of ambiguity, the strategy with the highest interpretation payoff is the same one with the highest transformation payoff, therefore it should be the one with highest translation value theoretically. By calculating one by one, it proves that Pareto Optimal strategy gains the highest translation value,d:Taking ambiguity as an example, this thesis demonstrates that the value of translation can be game-theoretically analyzed. In the narrow sense, the game-theoretical analysis of ambiguity translation can be divided into four models:first, to game-theoretically make strategic inferences from the original; second, to calculate the interpretation payoff of the strategies; third, to calculated the transformation payoff of the strategies; fourth, to calculate the translation value of each. In the broad sense, the game-theoretical analysis of ambiguity translation could guide translation in the similar way. This will be left for the future researches.