The Translation Tactics of Political Words in Diplomatic Interpretation

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Though ambiguity is classified at different levels in previous chapter, there’s another point that hasn’t been touched upon: ambiguity caused by unclear pronoun references, which is especially the case in literary works. For instance, in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensitivity (1811:11), the word “her” repeated three times in the sentence “Marianne gave a violent start, fixed her eyes upon Elinor, saw her turning pale, and fell back in her chair in hysterics.” What does “her” refer to respectively, is it all about Marianne or Elinor?

From aforementioned points, it can be concluded that not all the ambiguities are undesirable, in fact, some of them act as a powerful tool when the author uses them on purpose.

4. Cohesion and Coherence in Discourse Context

In many cases, ambiguity arise “ when the translator only knows one or two senses of a word and does not know the context needed to signal the correct meaning.” (Larson, 1998) As one of the defining feature of text, texture is “a property which ensures that a text ‘hang together’, both linguistically and conceptually” (Hatim& Mason, 1990). In normal cases, a text should be coherent and cohesive. Cohesion can be defined, following Beaugrande, as a way to connect components of a text sequentially on surface level by adopting cohesive devices while coherence concerns more about the continuity of senses underlying the surface text, i.e, logical connection.(1981:4) Both cohesion and coherence are standards of textuality, the lack of which may lead to unsuccessful communication. (Beaugrande and Dressler (1981:3)

In discourse structure, however, the role of cohesion is rather different which “links something with which have gone before.” (Halliday and Hasan, 1976) It relies on semantic relations between different elements in a text. As Halliday and Hasan put it, “the interpretation of any item in the discourse requires making reference to some other items in the discourse.” Blum-Kulka (2000) makes an investigation into the shifts of cohesion in translation and suggests that “shifts in the types of cohesive markers might have implication on the level of explicitness and text meaning between SL and TL”.

On the other hand, though many expressions have several shades of meanings, there is only one sense in a text in normal cases. (Beaugrande and Dressler, 1981)If the speech producer fails to indicate the clear intended meaning, ambiguity or “polyvalence” may occur, especially when the speaker intend to convey multiple senses at one time. Therefore, the continuity between senses serves as the basis of coherence. These senses constitute “a large configuration of a textual world” in which ambiguous concepts and their possible senses become less evident with defined discourse contexts. (1981:87)

As Blum-Kulka puts it, “translation is a process by which what is said might become obvious and clear, while what is meant might become vague and obscure.”

II. Methodology

In the following section, four instances of ambiguous references will be identified from the whole book along with a comparative analysis of the two versions of Chinese translation on the basis of cohesion and coherence. The examples are classified according to the intention of the speaker, namely, literary ambiguity and linguistic ambiguity. It should be noted that the two meanings of the ambiguous references will be named as M1 and M2. For the sake of greater clarity, the ambiguity elements in ST will be underlined.

III. Data Analysis

As mentioned in the first chapter, literary ambiguity (intentional ambiguity) is used by the speaker or author on purpose while linguistic ambiguity (unintentional ambiguity) is mainly caused by polysemy and homonymy. The examples presented below are on the basis of these two categories.

1. Literary Ambiguity

Segment 1

ST

TT

BT

Her voice sang: “It’s romantic, isn’t it, Tom?”

Wu: 她的声音像唱歌一般, “很浪漫, 是不是, 汤姆?”

Wang: “她自己的声音也像唱歌。 “浪漫极了，汤姆，是吗?”

Wu: Her voice sounded like singing. It’s romantic, isn’t it, Tom?

Wang: Her own voice also sounded like singing. It’s romantic, Tom, isn’t it?

M1: The nightingale

M2: Tom’s mistress

In this example, when Daisy heard her husband Tom making a call to his mistress, she looked outdoors and saw a nightingale singing on the lawn. After returning back to the table, she said this meaningful sentence to Tom. In the context, the word “her’ is an ambiguous referent which can either be interpreted as the nightingale or Tom’s mistress.

The author uses literary ambiguity by taking advantage of unclear personal pronoun “her”. By comparing two Chinese translations, it should be noted that the second translation differs from the first one in the additional use of cohesive marker “也”. As pointed out by Halliday& Hasan that the selection of cohesive markers may affect the texture, making it “loose” or “tight”. (1976:296) In Chinese, the word “也” (also) is a coordinating conjunction linking the semantic relation between senses, which, in this case, makes the texture tighter.

Segment 2

ST

TT

BT

‘That dog? That dog’s a boy.’

‘It’s a bitch, said Tom decisively. ‘Here’s your money. Go and buy more dogs with it.’

Wu: 那只狗？那只狗是雄的。”

“是只母狗，”汤姆斩钉截铁地说，“给你钱。拿去再去买十只狗。”

Wang: “那只狗？那只狗是雄的。”

“是只母狗，”汤姆斩钉截铁地说，“给你钱。拿去再去买十只狗。”

Wu: ‘That dog? That dog’s a boy.’