A Report On The Translation Of The Routledge Handbook Of Second Language Acquisition And Pragmatics (Sections One To Three)

This report is based upon the translation of the first three sections of The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Pragmatics.Edited by Naoko Taguchi and published in 2019 by Routledge,the handbook collects 32 papers on the key theories,methods,pedagogies and research findings in the area of L2 pragmatics development.In this report I probe into the translation of polysemous words and attributive clauses as well as the achievement of textual coherence under the framework Relevance Theory of Translation.The focus of the report is Chapter 4,case study,which gives a relatively comprehensive analysis of the above translation difficulties.According to Relevance Theory of Translation,translation is a double ostensive-inferential cognitive process as well as an interlingual interpretative use.A good translation should provide enough contextual effects and require least processing effort,so as to obtain an equivalence of optimal relevance between the source text and the target text.This translation practice indicates that since the concept “optimal relevance” is context-dependent,translators should have full awareness of the context and target readers’ cognitive environment.In regard to the translation of polysemous words,their proper meanings can be determined in a specific context.On syntactic level,the length of an attributive clause and the role it plays in the sentence decide whether to translate it into an attributive clause or to render it into an independent sentence.In order to realize textual coherence,cohesive ties are indispensable to the coherence in form,and communicative relevance helps target readers gain adequate contextual effects in realizing semantic coherence.