Relevance And Translation

Red Sorghum is one of the masterpiece of Mo Yan, the first Chinese Noble Prize Winner in Literature. Since its publication, the book is getting a lot of attention by many scholars. The novel sets on the background of Sino-Japanese War period and presents a vivid historical picture to readers through Mo Yan s bold way of writing technique and unique style writing of magic realism. In this book, the author s splendid ability to mater language also well illustrated by his adoption of lyric and epic, as well as the natural fusion of realistic and abstract description. Because of the special historical background and creation mode, there are lots of culture-loaded words in this book. At present, with the spreading of Chinese literature all over the world, more and more attentions are paid to the study of the English version of Red Sorghum, however, the translation study of culture-loaded words is rarely involved.As part of culture, language is also one of its most distinctive features. In literature works, the culture-loaded words carry plenty of cultural background knowledge that differs from other countries. The accuracy and effective translation of these words and expressions plays an active role in cross-language literature communication and cultural transmission.Based on relevance translation theory, the thesis classifies the culture-loaded words in Red Sorghum and gives a detailed discussion of each category. The author then discusses the translation strategies Howard Goldblatt adopts and whether his translation of these words and expressions achieved optimal relevance and his version is interpretively resembling with the original. At last, the author points out that because of the complexity of the cultural translation, the translators should take full account of the target readers cultural background knowledge and cognitive competence, select the corresponding translation strategies according to specific context. Only in this way can the target readers pay least processing efforts and gain enough contextual effects and make the original writer s intentions and target readers expectations meet. The author hopes the thesis could provide new ideas and pathways to the literature communication and development between different cultural backgrounds.