A Study On Translation Of Fuzzy Rhetoric

Fuzziness, the nature of language, was proposed by American professor L. A. Zadeh in his book named Fuzzy Sets in1965. Linguistic fuzziness could be caused by the inherent fuzziness of things. In addition, it also could be used to achieve certain pragmatic purpose, which is called fuzzy rhetoric. As fuzzy linguistics draw more and more attention in China, domestic scholars study the linguistic fuzziness from different aspects, such as cognition, pragmatics, linguistics, logic, etc. and the study of its application extends to various areas, like literature, poetry, advertising slogans and even legal documents. However, the study on the translation of fuzzy rhetoric has not received enough attention. Due to the cultural differences between Chinese and English, fuzzy rhetoric becomes a barrier to intercultural communication as well as a big challenge to fuzzy rhetoric translation. The application and translation of fuzzy rhetoric in popular science English(PSE), which is significant but has been neglected for a long time in academic circles, will provide a new perspective for the research of fuzzy rhetoric.This study contains five chapters, and each chapter is organized as follows:Chapter one provides a brief introduction of the fuzzy rhetoric in PSE, the paper’s research objective, significance, method and organization.Chapter two introduces some basic concepts involved in the paper, including fuzziness, fuzzy language and fuzzy rhetoric. Among them, fuzzy rhetoric is explained in details about its definition, classification and features. In addition, critical literature review at home and abroad is given on the fuzzy rhetoric research as the theoretical basis of this study. Chapter three discusses the translation theories of fuzzy rhetoric. Firstly, the limits of translatability about fuzzy rhetoric is discussed from three aspects:language, culture and thoughts. Secondly, the translation criteria of "faithfulness" is discussed in this part under the approach of Translation as Adaptation and Selection. Lastly, based on the foregoing discussion, the author aims to propose the translation strategy of seeking-common-ground-while-reserving-differences, guided by Reception Aesthetics theory and theory of Translation as Adaptation and Selection.In chapter four, the application and aesthetic function of fuzzy rhetoric in PSE are discussed respectively. Furthermore, some translation methods are adopted to translate stable fuzzy rhetoric and temporary fuzzy rhetoric with the examples picked up from popular science texts and their translation, guided by the translation strategy of seeking-common-ground-while-reserving-differences.In the conclusion, some findings, limitations and implications of this paper have been given out. So far, the whole thesis comes to the end.