STRATEGIES FOR TRANSLATING THE SPEECH ACTS OF DIRECTIVES, REJECTIONS, AND INQUIRIES IN ENGLISH DIALOGUES INTO THAI

Abstract

This research investigates the similarities and differences in expressing the speech acts of directives, rejections, and inquiries in the English texts and Thai-translated texts, and the strategies in translating them from English into Thai. The analyses focus on the linguistic forms of directives, rejections, and inquiries in the English texts and the Thai-translated texts and the factors governing them, as well as the translation strategies employed to cope with the differences in the linguistic forms of these three speech acts in the two languages. The analyses was done with the dialogues in two contemporary British fictions, Bridget Jones’s Diary (1996) and Turning Thirty (2000), and their Thai-translated version in the three linguistic dimensions, namely, direct-indirect speech acts, pragmatic structures, and politeness strategies. It is found that the direct linguistic forms are used more in the English texts than in the Thai-translated texts, and the indirect linguistic forms are used more in the Thai-translated texts than in the English texts, as hypothesized. These findings result from the influence of the contexts of culture because the English language is the low-context-culture language, while the Thai language, even in the translated texts, is the high-context-culture language. As for the translation strategies, it turns out that the literal translation is selected to make the translation achieve the pragmatic equivalence more than the free translation and the findings support the hypothesis that the orientation towards literal or free translation depends on the degree of imposition of the speech acts.