Consideration Of Translation In Terms Of Pragmatics

Relevance Theory is a far-reaching cognitive and pragmatic theory. Translation is one of the subjects influenced by it. This paper defines translation as an act of ostensive-inferential interlingual interpretation of a source text and aims at discussing the explaining force of Relevance Theory in such translation.The translation theory in light of Relevance Theory is a dynamic interpretation. Owing to the fact that people's cognition and their environments are different, and the translator must try to find a reliable support to understand the source text and correctly convey them to the target readers at the time of processing the source text. That support is optimal relevance. Hence on the basis of pragmatic analyses of the source text according to optimal relevance, the translated text should be equivalent in optimal relevance with the original one. Consequently, the intention of the author and the expectation of the target language readers will be met so as to achieve the agreement of the translated text and the source text and realize the pragmatic equivalence in translation, namely the same optimal relevance.The first part is an introduction to the paper. The goal, studying method and conclusion of the paper are presented here. The major point of the thesis is: to achieve pragmatic equivalence in translation, optimal relevance plays an important role.Chapter I mainly deals with pragmatic equivalence in translation principle. The chapter focuses on pragmatic, equivalence principle hi translation in terms of pragmatics, which stresses that not only the ostensive meaning but also the implicated meaning of the source should be taken into consideration in translating and then the translator reproduces them into the target text after pragmatic analysis. Therefore, the paper discusses the relevance-theoretic framework and its status in pragmatic equivalence as well as the significance of optimal relevance.What's more, the sociopragamatical optimal relevance and equivalence are particularly pointed out.Chapter II focuses on optimal relevance in translation. From the studying of the cognitive environments in communication, of the understanding of optimal relevance and of the analysis of successful and unsuccessful examples in optimal relevance, the paper further demonstrates the close-knit relationship between Relevance Theory and translation, and the necessity of introducing Relevance Theory into translation. Also, the paper makes certain the fact that the key to successful translation lies in the realization of the same optimal relevance of the source text.Chapter III argues the three major factors in the application of Relevance Theory, namely culture, sentiments and standpoint. As the cognitive environments of the source text author and the translator are different, if you intend to reproduce the optimal relevance of the source text and to achieve pragmatic equivalence between them, these factors can not be ignored. What's more, it is possible for them to do harm to the equivalent effectiveness of the target text. This chapter emphasizes how to overcome these difficulties by means of analysis of examples.The last part comes to a conclusion of the paper. On the basis of the theory and examples in the above three chapters, we are easy to find that it is valid to introduce Relevance Theory into translation, and more importantly, to understand the optimal relevance is the crucial premise for successful translation.