A Pragmatic Approach To The Study Of English Translation Of The Chinese Modal Verbs

This thesis proposes the English translation of modal verbs in TCFL textbooks through the pragmatic perspective.In teaching Chinese as a foreign language,the explanations of words in English can help the English speakers understand and master the Chinese better.Therefore,the compilation of modal verbs in TCFL textbooks are equally considerable.Interpretation of modal verbs in three typical TCFL textbooks,which are Boya Chinese,Developing China and Chinese Courses,will be concerned in the thesis and analysis and proposals will be offered according to the translation,interpretation and deficiency problems in those textbooks.This thesis is composed mainly of four chapters.The first chapter is the introduction,which mainly elaborates the purpose and significance of the topic,including the research object and scope.It gives brief introduction of the topic research and the methods used in research from three aspects: English translation,compilation of English translation and comparative study of modal verbs in TCFL textbooks.The second chapter selects four pragmatic theories that are of reference value to the study of this paper according to the previous studies of linguistic scholars on pragmatic theories from the perspective of pragmatic translation.Second,three interpretation principles that is applicable to the textbook analysis are summarized combining the comparison of English-Chinese modal translation and the characteristics of modal verb translation in textbooks.The third part contains a statistical analysis of the number and the grade distribution of modal verbs in the textbooks.After analyzing the translation and interpretation of 18 modal verbs in the textbooks,it is found that many problems of modal verbs translation are ignored,such as unawareness of the context,imprecision and intricacy of translation,irrationality of speech tagging and insufficiency of grammar notes.The fourth part,guided by the principles of modal verb translation and interpretation,suggests that the translation and interpretation should focus on the pragmatic context;the translation items should be accurate;the part of speech tagging should be reasonable and the arrangement of modal verbs in TCFL textbooks should be distributed properly according to the outline level.Finally,the conclusion part summarizes the shortcomings of this study and looks forward to the future research.