Relevance In Contexts: A Pragmatic Approach To Translation Equivalence

Though a new theory, Relevance Theory plays an important role not only in the contemporary studies of pragmatics, but also in the studies of translation. It transfers the attention of translation studies from the result of the translated work to the process of translating, which deals with the cognition and psyche of the author, the translator and the reader, thus providing translation studies with both a new perspective of thinking and a practical way of evaluating translation.From the perspective of relevance theory of communication, " translation falls naturally under the interpretive use of language: the translation is intended to restate in one language what someone else said or wrote in another language". (Gutt, 2001:46)Based on Relevance Theory, this thesis first introduces a few essential concepts: context, optimal relevance and the like. The author regards context as a dynamic and psychological concept, it is " the subset of the hearer's assumptions about the world and the set of premises used in interpreting utterance". (Sperber and Wilson, 1986:15)The most important task of the translator is to find the optimal relevance in contexts of the original text and the target language reader. In the translation process, the degree of context is also decided by the relevance principle. Once the optimal relevance is found in translation, a certain context will be decided. So the translators' task is to try to search for the optimal relevance and create proper contextual effect during the translating process, thus providing a sound basis for translation equivalence.