Paper Keywords: cooperative principle; Fuzzy language; Cultural information
Abstract: In recent years, fuzzy language has aroused widespread concern in academic circles. On the basis of discussing the embodiment of fuzzy language in the English translation of China's classic A Dream of Red Mansions, this paper analyzes some typical examples in A Dream of Red Mansions from the perspective of cooperative principle, and summarizes the ideal expected effect and translation methods achieved by using fuzzy language to deal with historical information, with a view to providing practical solutions to the problems that may be encountered in the Chinese-English translation of China's literary works.
I. Introduction
When it comes to vagueness, people always seem to have some negative associations, because we always put accuracy and clarity first when explaining the use of language. In fact, we can't do without vague language in our daily communication, just as we can't do without accurate language. Fuzziness is the basic attribute of natural language. The fuzziness of reference network language is actually "the uncertainty about the boundary and nature of objects in people's cognition". However, the opposition between certainty and uncertainty, accuracy and fuzziness only exists in the cognitive relationship between things and people, that is, it is meaningful only within the scope of cognitive activities. Accuracy and fuzziness are produced in the objective process of human cognitive activities. Fuzzy language can be seen everywhere in daily life. For example, are tomatoes fruits or vegetables? Someone is in their twenties, twenty-one or twenty-two, twenty-three or twenty-four. Is spring from February to April or from March to May? These are all fuzzy phenomena caused by the unclear boundary of the research object.
Translation is an expression transformation between languages in the process of communication and cognition, and it is a language practice to re-express the ideological content and style of another language form in one language form. In the process of translation, all kinds of fuzzy factors contained in the original text often lead the translator to misunderstand or fail to express it accurately in another language, while fuzzy factors in the target language often lead to the distortion of the original intention or inaccurate expression. Therefore, the understanding of vague sentences is very important in translation practice.
Second, the principle of cooperative translation.
The principle of cooperation was put forward by the American philosopher H.P.Grice in 1967. Grice believes that in order to achieve communicative purposes, both parties should follow certain cooperative principles in order to understand and cooperate with each other as much as possible. Grice believes that the cooperative principles that people follow in conversation include four categories, and each category includes a criterion and some sub-criteria. (Grice, 1975)
Principle of quantity a (quantity maximization)
A) What you say should include the information needed for the purpose of the conversation.
B) What you say should not contain more information than you need.
Quality motto: Try to keep your word.
A) Don't say what you know is false.
B) Don't talk nonsense without sufficient evidence.
C relationship motto: there must be a connection.
Motto: Be clear.
A) avoid obscurity
B) avoid ambiguity
C) Concise (avoid verbosity)
D) orderly
Translation is a communicative act. Because translators should also follow the principle of cooperation. Grice believes that people cooperate with each other when exchanging information, and communicators abide by the principle of cooperation, which helps to achieve the most effective information exchange. Although Grice's cooperative principle is oriented to oral communication, his research results are fully applicable to written discourse. Because translation is also a kind of communication and a special communicative activity. "Translation is a communicative process under a certain social background." When the original author works, he is communicating with readers. As the producer of the translation, the translator is in the same position as the original author when producing the text. From the translator's point of view, one side is the original author. When the translator communicates with the original author, the original author is the speaker and he is the listener. He wants to understand the author's communicative intention from the expression of his works. On the other hand, the target audience is the translator, who is the spokesman of the original author and the target audience is the listener. Translators should effectively convey the original author's intention to the target readers, so that the target readers can understand the original author's communicative intention and accept the translation. It can be seen that the translator is the communication link between the original author and the target reader. In the process of translation, only when the translator also abides by the principle of cooperation can he successfully communicate with the original author and target readers.
Translators should abide by the principle of quantity and translate according to the information provided by the original text, and should not add or subtract information at will; To abide by the principle of quality, we must be faithful to the original intention, do not change the original content, and do not allow misinterpretation or random translation; Relevance criterion requires translators to consider the relevance of both the original context and the target audience. The model standard requires the translation to be concise and clear, avoiding obscure words, vague words or redundant sentences. If the translator violates the cooperative principle, then the communication between the translator and the original author and the target reader cannot be considered successful.
In the process of translation, there are three participants: the source language author, the translator and the target language reader. Using Grice's cooperative principle, we can summarize their relationship as follows:
Author of source language-four criteria-translator-four criteria-target reader
In this communication process, the four principles of Grice are even more important. It is not difficult to see that the translator, as an intermediary, plays a very important role in this communication process. Because the information that the speaker (the author of the source language) wants to express can only be conveyed to the addressee (the reader of the target language) through translation, that is to say, the translation is completed.