Chinese Translation Of The Sea Wolf In The Light Of Cooperative Principle

Nowadays, more and more pragmatic theories are being applied to translationstudies. Among them, Cooperative Principle (CP), which regulates interlocutors’verbal behavior, plays a unique role in improving translation quality. However, atpresent, scholars have mainly discussed CP in translation of dialogues, with limitedresearches on literary works, especially non-conversations such as environmentaland psychological descriptions. In the face of this problem, the thesis employs CP toassess translation quality of two Chinese-versions of The Sea Wolf, so as to promotestudies on CP in literary translation,In the communicative process, people are bound to cooperate with each otherfor their shared goal of a successful conversation. The phenomenon is also found inliterary translation. However, translation, as a cross-cultural communication,features a more complicated cooperative process involved by three parties: theoriginal author, target readers and the translator. To faithfully reproduce originalinformation, a translator should cooperate with both the author and readers inspanning cultural and language gaps.To verify the above-mentioned ideas, the thesis first explains the cooperativeprocess across culture and then re-explains CP and its four maxims in literarytranslation. After that, the thesis uses CP to analyze two Chinese translations of JackLondon’s The Sea Wolf, so as to evaluate the function of CP in improving literarytranslation.The study shows that in literary translation, CP aims to achieve a successfulcommunication between the author and target readers, with its four maximsproposing specific requirements to a translator. Generally speaking, a translatorshould try his best to obey all the maxims, however, when certain maxims have to beviolated due to cultural or language gaps, a translator should make proper choices onmaxims for the primary goal of preserving trans-cultural cooperation.The study is expected to expand the scope of translation studies and improves quality of literary translation.