ABSTRACT
Chapter 5, in which the author shows how she reads fuzziness in the two Chinese translations of The Da Vinci Code, is cast in the mode of source text–target text comparison. Analyses and discussions are conducted from two levels: (1) a contrastive study of the original and translated textual material; (2) elucidations of the law of fuzziness and its application in translation studies. In support of its basic argument, the monograph uses data from the bestseller original and its translation into Chinese for a case study. The analyses and discussions are both detailed and filled with original critique. The structure it establishes for analysis is of special relevance: in the ST, there are three kinds of fuzziness, i.e. extra-textual, textual, and mixed. When these features are realised in language form, three dimensions of fuzziness may then be distinguished, i.e., spaciotemporal, cultural and stylistic. Each dimension is then further divided into two aspects: one involving the denotative and connotative meanings of the language used, the other its pragmatic significance. Such analyses and discussions thus effectively serve to provide a theoretical account of literary “fuzzy language” within translation studies in general.
