Pragmatic Coherence and Equivalence in Literary Translation

Abstract

The topic of the present paper concerns cultural translation and focuses on the cross-cultural aspect of pragmatic equivalence. It is based on the hypothesis that the pragmatic framework of the literary work, i.e. the deliberate choice of tied verbal actions and the interpretations of these actions, forms an important slot in the overall structure of cultural context and displays the artistic literary idea of the writer. Hence the research work clearly shows that literary translation should adequately transmit the intentions and ideas encoded in the original text to the readers from the respective culture. The cross-cultural pragmatic analysis of the speech act sequences and reporting words carried out on the material of a literary work in English and its Armenian translation has enabled us to determine that the violation of pragmatic coherence of the source text distorts the cultural context planned by the author.