Relevance Theory And Literary Translation

This thesis aims to explore some interrelated aspects of translation theory and practice and show how they can be explicitly and sufficiently accounted for from a relevance-theoretic framework.This thesis falls into four parts:Part 1 is a study of communication. In this part, different answers to the two basic questions - what is communicated and how is communication achieved - are given to show that both the traditional code model and Grice's inferential model are inadequate in some way as a study of communication. Then, by looking into "meaning", and especially Grice's theory of conversation, we get a general idea about the main foundation of relevance theory.Part 2 is a detailed introduction of communication under relevance theory. Ostensive-inferential model is introduced through the explanation of the key concepts of ostension, inference and relevance. These concepts help to explain the different roles of communicator and audience in the process of communication, and make it clear that successful communication is achieved through the pursuit of optimal relevance.Part 3 begins with a brief review of translation study, introduces the relevance-theoretic notion of "context", and claims that translation is an interpretive use of language with the optimal relevance as its principle.Part 4 is the focus of this thesis. In this part, relevance ideas are adopted to analyze such issues as translatability, equivalence, the translator's style, and imperfection in translation studies. In addition, the special aspects with regard to poetry translation are mentioned.In conclusion, relevance theory provides new perspectives to translation from human cognition and makes things easier to understand for naturally translation is a process where subjectivity is hard to neglect. As a kind of communication, translation is inevitably a comprehensive activity involving mental abilities andpreferences. Hence, in translation studies, we must emphasize the translator's role in translation.