A Pragmatic Approach To The Coherence In Literature Translation

In recent years, pragmatic approaches have been adopted in the explanation of translation procedure, process and product. And coherence, a concept regarding connectivities, relations or connectivity in a text, has received much attention in translation study.In this thesis, I'll try to reveal, through a close observation, how problems in literary translation are caused by the translator's failure to reestablish adequate coherence in corresponding text at a pragmatic angle and also how such problems can be solved by means of a strategic application of coherence principles.This thesis first devotes a brief discussion to the two terms pragmatics and coherence; then, in Chapter One, it expounds some related theories of pragmatics, with Grice's cooperative principle, conversational implicature principle and Sperber and Wilson's relevance theory included. Chapter Two is a theoretical review of the concept of coherence and its application in translation. Chapter Three makes investigation on Grice's Cooperative Principle and its 4 maxims, and illustrates with examples the necessity of application of coherence principle; Chapter Four is devoted to a discussion on Grice's Conversational Implicature Principle and its application in literature translation; and Chapter Five demonstrates the usage of Sperber and Wilson's Relevance Theory in translated works. The illustrative examples are mainly taken from some English novels and their different Chinese versions. The lost part, Conclusion, sums up the foregoing chapters and concludes that when coherence in pragmatics is optimally reconstructed, the goal of translation is best achieved.