Rhetoric Devices Applied In Oscar Wilde's Comedies And Their Translation Into Chinese

Drama may be regarded as one of the three major genres of literature,yet when it comes to literary translation,drama has lamentably been neglected.This thesis attempts to make some contributions to this inadequately explored area in the light of Relevance Theory.It is widely believed that the lack of relevant theories and the difficulties in drama translation are at least partly because of the dualistic nature of drama as both a literary art and a performing art.This complex nature poses the translator with a difficult choice: Should drama translation be reader-oriented or performance-oriented? Relevance Theory seems to be able to assist translators in making their decisions.It is a pragmatic approach to communication from the cognitive perspective,which holds that the optimal relevance is the principle people comply with in communication.Though it was not formulated for translation studies,Relevance Theory is powerful in explaining translation controversy.As translation is a cognitive activity,it is an ostensive-inferential process,with informative intention and communicative intention to be translated from one language into another. According to Relevance Theory,the drama translator should immerse himself in the original cognitive environment,seek out all the reference that the utterances explicitly and implicitly make and acquire the right comprehension of the original text,then by inferring the cognitive environment of the target audience,he should choose from the various potential versions the best optimally relevant one,which can best help the audience of the target laguage understand the image or message intended by the source language writer.With Relevance Theory as a solid theoretical basis,the thesis makes a comparative analysis of four Chinese translation versions of Oscar Wilde's comedy An Ideal Husband, by Yu Kwang-chung,Qian Zhide,Zhang Nanfeng and Wen Xin respectively.The applicability and value of Relevance Theory towards drama translation are proved through detailed analysis from various perspectives.More specifically,principles for drama translation are proposed:terseness,musicality,actability and individuality.Only when a translation performs well in the above four aspects,could we say the version achieves the optimal relevance and is satisfactory both for reading and performance.This thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter one focuses on drama and drama translation,including the dualistic nature of drama,the features of drama language,drama translation and the controversy in drama translation.Chapter two discusses Relevance Theory and its application to translation studies from different perspectives.Chapter three focuses on Oscar Wilde,the outstanding playwright who is famous for his comedies and Wildean language;the study of Wilde in China and his comedian language features are also dwelt on in this chapter.Chapter four is a comparative analysis of four Chinese versions of Wilde's famous comedy An Ideal Husband.The comparison is carried out from different perspectives.In the summary part,four principles of drama translation are proposed in order to achieve the optimal relevance.Chapter five draws a conclusion about the application and significance of Relevance Theory to drama translation,and offers suggestions for further investigation in this inadequately explored area.