Explaining The Translation Behavior In The Frame Of Relevance Theory

Translation is increasingly seen as a process, a form of human behavior. The translator encounters many choices and alternatives in the translation process. In addition, the translation process includes understanding and expressing. Scholars spare no effort to find a general rule accounting for the process. Translation has long held been a communication activity. Therefore, communicative approach becomes one of the choices to study translation. Views on communication have undergone various changes. So far, there experience three communication models: the code mode, the inferential mode and the ostensive-inferential mode. The three modes bring forth more or less the alterations on the translation. The present thesis aims at describing the differences of the three modes and their influences on translation respectively. In particular, it includes a thorough explanation on the ostensive-inferential communication. Relevance Theory (RT) generalizes the communication process as an ostensive-inferential process, in which the communicator conveys his communicative intentions to the hearer. Meanwhile the hearer, combining with the contextual information, gets the intentions by inferring. The hearer's inference and recognition of the intentions are guided by the Principle of Relevance. The search of relevance becomes the key factor in comprehension. The success of communication lies in the joint effort between the communicator's manifestness and the hearer's inference. The thesis also gives in detail the application of Relevance Theory to translation, that is, how this ostensive-inferential mode explains the translation behavior. The following aspects are covered in this regard: the new understanding of the translation process; the translator's facilitating role in the process; translation means conveying informative and communicative intentions; optimal relevance should be included as a criterion for the translation criticism.