An Analysis Of Linguistic Culture-loaded Words Translation In The Last Lover From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

With the implementation of the Strategies for Chinese Culture Outgoing,increasing attention has been paid to the spread of Chinese culture in recent years.To spread Chinese culture,the translation of Chinese contemporary novels can serve as one of the most important carriers.The Last Lover,is one of representative works written by Chinese female writer Can Xue.The Last Lover is translated by Annelise Finegan Wasmoen and was published by Yale University Press in 2014.It won the prize of Best Translated Book Award of America in 2015,with Can Xue being the first Chinese writer to win the prize and having gained extensive attention in Anglo-American literary circle.It’s undoubted that the success of The Last Lover is closely related to the masterful translation of its English version.In The Last Lover,a large number of Chinese linguistic culture-loaded words have been employed.Due to the distinctive cultural differences,the rendering of these Chinese linguistic culture-loaded words tends to be a challenging task for translators.Thus,the thesis aims to conduct an in-depth exploration to the translation methods of these linguistic culture-loaded words in The Last Lover and summarize some feasible translation strategies of linguistic culture-loaded words in Chinese contemporary novels.The thesis will adopt Relevance Theory as the theoretical guidance.The core issues of Relevance Theory include both communication and cognition,and then the theory is applied into translation studies by Gutt.Gutt believes that translation is also an act of communication and the translator is supposed to seek for the optimal relevance which means to have adequate contextual effects with the least processing efforts.Eugene Nida classifies culture into five categories: ecological culture,material culture,social culture,religious culture and linguistic culture.Based on Nida’s classifications toward culture,culture-loaded words tend to be classified into the five categories mentioned above.The thesis will mainly focus on the research of linguistic culture-loaded words.Linguistic culture-loaded words refer to those language forms which contain the specific cultural background and cultural connotation in a language system.Some representative linguistic culture-loaded words collected from The Last Lover are divided into several categories which are respectively colloquial words and slang,idioms and literary allusions.Through the detailed case studies,the thesis figures out that in order to maximize the relevance of the linguistic culture-loaded expressions,the translator strives to make their translation understood by target readers as effortlessly as possible.The thesis concludes the main translation methods applied to deal with the linguistic culture-loaded words in The Last Lover as followings: free translation,literal translation,omission,amplification and substitution.Different translation methods have been adopted flexibly by the translator in terms of different categories of linguistic culture-loaded words.With the findings of the thesis,the author hopes to provide some reference for the translation of linguistic culture-loaded words in other Chinese contemporary novels.