Semantic Shifts Of Translation From The Perspective Of Pragmatics

In practical translation process shifts of translation are inevitable. In addition to formal departures from the source text, translation shifts also occur at the semantic level. Quite a few semantic shifts, to a great extent, result from the systemic differences between the source language and target language. Besides, pragmatics has provided some insights into the transmission of meaning in communication, and semantic shifts of translation could also be viewed from a pragmatic perspective. The present study attempts to apply pragmatic perspective of meaning to specify and explain the phenomena of semantic shifts in translation. Theoretical discussions are supported by the qualitative analyses of some semantic shifts existing in some Chinese-English and English-Chinese literary translations.Based on the divergence of sentence meaning and utterance meaning, semantic shifts in translation could be defined as partial or complete departures from the source text sentence meaning or utterance meaning. While shifts in sentence meaning are attempts to comply with pragmatic translation principle, shifts in utterance meaning turn out as violations against the principle. Pragmatics attributes the production and interpretation of meaning to a proper mastery of pragmatic contexts. Semantic shifts in translation are closely related to relevant translation contexts as well as the systemic differences of the source language and target language. In verbal communication, the related contexts tend to affect the transfer of meanings through the addresser and the addressee. The contextual factors fall into linguistic context, context of situation and context of culture. In translation, linguistic context refers to that in the source text, context of situation includes field, tenor and mode of the source text, and context of culture consists of the socio-cultural backgrounds for both the source text and the target text. The involvement of these various pragmatic contexts lead to the complexity of translation, so complete equivalence in translation is almost impossible, and semantic shifts are rather pervasive. In specific translation practice, related translation contexts pose a directing or triggering influence on the translator's shifts from the source text meaning. When the sentence meaning and utterance meaning of the source text cannot be both conveyed in the target text, the relevant...