A sociosemiotic approach to Chinese‐English translation

Abstract

This article deals with meaning in Chinese‐English translation from a sociosemiotic angle. In the light of Charles Morris’ categorization of the semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic dimensions of the sign, three groups of sociosemiotic meanings (referential, intralingual, and pragmatic) are distinguished and explicated. The translator needs to transfer all the meanings which are subsumed under these three headings, including the types of meaning which are usually referred to as style or formal features but are ultimately reducible to intralingual and pragmatic meanings. Each of these sociosemiotic meanings may figure prominently in a specific discourse or communication situation. As comparable source and target expressions most often do not form a one‐to‐one correspondence in the distribution of the meanings they may have, the translator is obliged to give precedence to the most salient or important meaning(s) in a given context while endeavouring to transfer the maximum number of meanings of the source message. The notion of equivalence in translation should therefore be sociosemiotic.