Application Of Relevance Theory In The Interpretation Of Advertisements And Their Translation

Advertising, as a means of promoting sales, has become an integral part of our daily life. It has been playing a more and more important role in economic life. Meanwhile, people are paying more and more attention to the importance of advertising in linguistic study. With China's entrance into the WTO and the globalization of the world economy, advertisements and advertisement translation are getting all the more important.Based on Relevance Theory proposed by Sperber and Wilson in 1986, the thesis first of all attempts to analyze the cognitive inferential process and the conditions of contextual effect and optimal relevance in advertising comprehension in order to explore the influence of information relevance on advertising effects. Secondly, the relevance-theoretic account of translating is discussed. Relevance Theory sees the intra-lingual communication as one single ostensive-inferential process. Translation is so special as to be involved with inter-lingual and cross-cultural communication. Hence, as a special form of communication, translation consists of two ostensive-inferential processes. In Gutt's view, a translation should be a receptor language text that interpretively resembled the original, and the basic rule that governs translation is relevance. Therefore, in the relevance framework, translation canbe defined as a dynamic process, an act of ostensive-inferential verbal (intra-lingual or inter-lingual) interpretation. The ultimate goal of translation is optimal relevance. Then, the paper emphasizes the significance of the target addressees' cognitive environment and its assessment. Finally, the paper points out that, when translating advertisements, top priority shall be given to the cultural and optimal relevance of advertisements.Thus it can be seen that Relevance Theory plays an important guiding role in the process of advertisement comprehension and translation.