On Translation Of Fuzzy Language

Vagueness is one of the basic features in our human language. Fuzzy linguistics, which has the vagueness of natural language as its research target, can appropriately explain some difficult language problems, deepening and widening our language research. At present, fuzzy theory has been applied by some translators to guide translation study and practice. Some knowledge has been acquired about the translation of fuzzy language. Vagueness exists in translation work, which can be seen from many aspects, such as the cognitive rules, characteristics of the literary works, traits of natural language, or genre of the original work. Moreover, there is vagueness in the process of understanding and expressing the source language. The existence of vagueness in language will inevitably influence the translation. Most importantly, the translation criteria are vague. Translators often argue about which method should be applied, literal translation or free translation.This thesis, based on the above research, attempts to analyze the translation of fuzzy language from the perspectives of sociolinguistics, pragmatics, rhetoric and lexicology. In the analysis, fuzzy language is divided into semantic fuzziness, syntactic fuzziness, image fuzziness and pragmatic fuzziness. In each aspect, the methodology of fuzzy language is discussed and Nida's functional equivalence proves to be effective. This research tries to address the question of fuzzy language from different perspectives.This thesis is divided into five parts.In the first chapter, the author gives the definitions of some related concepts;then briefly reviews the researches conducted on the vagueness of language, as well as the achievements. The research purpose and significance of this thesis are also introduced.The second chapter serves as the theoretical bases of fuzzy language translation, in which the author discusses the translatability of fuzzy languages, supported by the cultural and linguistic universalities. Language is social, so certain similar elementsexist in different cultures, which make translation possible.In the third chapter, some related subjects are explored, which affect the translation of fuzzy languages, including sociolinguistics, pragmatics, rhetoric and lexicology. The theories of sociolinguistics help translators probe into the translation of fuzzy language from some social factors. Pragmatics influences the translation of fuzzy language in a profound way, because fuzzy language has some pragmatic functions, such as Politeness Principle. Some figures of speech, such as pun, transferred epithet, paradox and euphemism, are realized on the basis of "fuzziness". Several principles in lexicology, especially polysemy, make up a part of fuzzy language, so the researches in lexicology might give some guidance to the translation of fuzzy language.In the fourth chapter, different aspects of fuzzy language are discussed after the introduction of the principle of fuzzy language translation. First, the author examines the fuzziness and precision in Chinese and English. By comparison, the author finds the transformation and difference existing in these two languages. Because of these reasons, it is very difficult for a translator to follow "faithfulness" in the process of translating fuzzy language. As a result, another principle emerges, functional equivalence. Then, vague language is classified into different levels according to its inherent characteristics: semantic fuzziness, syntactic fuzziness, image fuzziness and pragmatic fuzziness. By analyzing an abundance of examples, the author notices that translators employ various translation strategies to deal with vague language. However, a lot of the translators follow Nida's functional equivalence principle, no matter what strategies they adopt, literal translation, free translation, substitution, omission or addition.The last chapter, serving as a conclusive part of the thesis as a whole, points out that the translation of fuzzy language is affected by many a factor, so we should follow functional equivalence principle and apply the appropriate translation strategy according to the context.This research, on one hand, is a significant attempt to investigate the translation methodology of fuzzy language, and on the other hand, offers a new theoreticalapproach and research methodology to the analysis of fuzzy language translation.