Creative Treason And Optimal Relevance

This paper explores the relationship between creative treason in translation and relevance principle, that is, Optimal Relevance, and contends that creative treason as an effective means is for the faithful reproduction of the Optimal Relevance of the original."Traduttori, traditori."(Translation is treason) (方梦之, 1998: 86). This famous comment on translation reflects the translator's a little helplessness as well as people's prejudice against translation. However, treason has always been the necessary and unavoidable feature and phenomenon of translation. With the shift of attention from the static text itself to the dynamic process of the relationship between the source text writer, the translator and the target text reader, especially with the gradual recognition of and emphasis on the translator's subjective role in translation, translation, especially literary translation, has no longer been regarded as the simple and mechanic "copy" of the original but a kind of re-creation through the subjective creativity of the translator. Translation is always more or less the creative treason of the translator, that is, the reproduction of the spirit and artistic conception of the original without rigidly following its linguistic form. It is of no doubt that there exist a limit for creative treason and also a lack of theoretic basis. Relevance Theory as a kind of cognitive and pragmatic theory may provide creative treason with a criterion and a purpose — Optimal Relevance. As a kind ofcommunicative act, translation is always the translator's selective process in accordance with the intention of the ST writer and the expectation of the TT reader: the translator first pursues the Optimal Relevance from the communicative act ( the source text and its context) manifested by the ST writer, and then loyally transfers such Optimal Relevance to the target text by creatively taking full advantage of the target language for the achievement of the Optimal Relevance between the communicative intention of the ST writer and the cognitive expectation of the TT reader.This paper consists of four chapters. Chapter 1 is an introduction of creative treason, including its characteristics, features, function, and manifestations, and furthermore, the limit of creative treason. In chapter 2, the author at first introduces some basic concepts of Relevance Theory, most importantly, its nuclear concept—relevance principle, that is, every act of ostensive communication communicates the presumption of its own Optimal Relevance; and then she points out the influence and explanatory adequacy which relevance principle has towards translation, and proceeds to expound the relationship between creative treason and Optimal Relevance: creative treason is for the reproduction of Optimal Relevance— pursuit of the Optimal Relevance in the source text and transference of it in the target text. Chapter 3 studies the relationship between creative treason and Optimal Relevance in terms of literary translation and science-technology translation: creative treason occurs mainly in literary...