Cultural Translation In The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Cultural translation involves transferring cultural information from the source text to the target text, to which traditional translation theories provide two means, namely domestication and foreignization, holding that once one of the means is determined, it should be adhered to through the whole passage. While in practice translators find, embarrassingly, that the use of sole means of domestication or foreignization often results in difficulties to translate some cultural elements with the chosen means, thus they are compelled to resort to the other, explaining this as an expedience. Such an expedient account obviously lacks a sound theoretic ground. This phenomenon lasted until relevance theory began to be adopted in translation field.Relevance theory defines translation as an interlingual / intralingual ostensive-inferential interpretive act, in which the comprehension and interpretation of utterance depends on optimal relevance. Translation with optimal relevance achieves the closest resemblance in implicature and explicature between the source and the target text, fulfilling meeting the intention of the writer with the expectation of the target reader. In relevance-theoretic view, domestication and foreignization are two compatible and complementary means serving one purpose, that is, successful translation, one with optimal relevance.The introduction to the paper begins with the intention of the research and its theoretic basis. The argument set forth is that mutual complement of domestication and foreignization is essential to successful cultural translation.Chapter â…  elaborates a new notion of translation in the framework of relevance theory, with explanations to some important concepts, such as context, relevance and optimal relevance. The point is that in understanding and translating the original, the translator needs the help of relevance and pursues optimal relevance.Chapter â…¡ argues that in cultural translation correct mastery and selection of cultural contexts depends on optimal relevance. This section first defines cultural context, then examines the differences between source and target cultural contexts...