On English Translation Of Allusions In Mao Zedong's Poems From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Mao Zedong's poems are cherished as a magnificent treasure in Chinese contemporary literature due to the profound thoughts of his poetry and his outstanding skill in composing poetry. His poems are of high research value. All of Mao Zedong's poems are written in classical Chinese verse forms. His poems not only inherit traits of traditional Chinese poetry, but also greatly develop it in the poet's own way. Many of Mao Zedong's poems are still very popular in China. They are frequently quoted in popular literature, culture and daily conversations. Up to now, Mao Zedong's poems have been rendered into many kinds of foreign languages in many versions abroad and in China, read and appreciated by large numbers of readers and well-known personalities all over the world.Allusion is the quintessence of Chinese language and crystallization of human wisdom, making it a bright pearl in ancient Chinese cultural achievements. It is known that poetic language greatly stresses subtlety, euphemism, and association while as a gem in language, allusion is highly condensed in form but profound in meaning. which makes it the first choice of the poets of all ages. Therefore, allusions played a crucial role in traditional Chinese poetry. Mao Zedong's poems made much use of classical allusions, which is a typical characteristic of Mao Zedong's poems. Therefore, appropriate treatment of the allusions is important to the translation of Mao Zedong's poems. Unfortunately, how to appropriately render these allusions into English comprises a tough task for translators.The translation of Mao Zedong's poems started in 1958. So far, there have been dozens of English versions. Of which, two widespread English versions are particularly taken to make a comparison, which are "the official version" published by the Foreign Languages Press in 1976 and Zhao Zhentao's version published in 1992 respectively. In terms of allusion translation, the two versions are quite different. The author of this thesis attempts to make a comparison of the translation orientations, translation principles and translation methods adopted by different translators to see their considerations for the target readers'cognitive context from the perspective of Relevance Theory. To be more specific, "the official version" is source-text oriented. It takes the so-called "faithfulness" as its translation principle and employs literal translation. While the metrical form (Traditional Chinese verse style) of the original is changed into free verse, the tune names which have rich cultural connotations are all transliterated, and there is not any annotation added except for the original author's notes. It can be seen that "the official version" doesn't take target readers'cognitive context into account. There is almost no relation between the original information and the target readers'cognitive context. The literal translation of allusions makes them unnatural or even incomprehensible to target readers, failing to convey the rich cultural connotations of the allusions and damage the original style. To the contrary, Zhao Zhentao's version shows much more consideration for target readers'cognitive context. His version is target-reader oriented. Zhao Zhentao's version employs a variety of translation strategies, such as preserves the original metrical style, supplements large amount of cultural background information, and adopts liberal translation plus annotation method etc., which make the target readers get optimal relevance between the original information and their cognitive context and greatly facilitate the target readers'understanding of the poems and the traditional Chinese culture as well.Therefore, taking Relevance Theory as a theoretical basis and comparative standard, the author of this thesis presumes that Zhao Zhentao's version can better convey the rich cultural connotations of allusions in Mao Zedong's poems and it is also conducive to Sino-foreign cultural exchanges.