| When conducting translation practice, the translator is found to be in a dilemma as for what strategy should be adopted to cope with text with specific linguistic or cultural features. Relevance theory, introducing new angles of pragmatics and cognition into the study of translation, throws new light on this problem. According to relevance theory, translation is a process of double ostensive-inferential communication, in which the translator plays both as a communicator and an audience. The process of translation is the one of inference and searching for relevance and the aim of translation is to yield optimal relevance. The choice of translation strategy would be based on the translator's accurate assessment of the TL reader's cognitive environment.This paper is a tentative research on the application of relevance theory to translation practice. To illustrate the guiding value of relevance-theoretic approach to translation, the translations of Lao She's Luotuo Xiangzi and Teahouse are chosen for case study. By analyzing varied strategies different translators adopt to handle language-specific or cultural-loaded expressions in their translations, the author draws the conclusion: various translation strategies can be justified in their own right and it is the translator's accurate assessment of the target reader's cognitive environment that more often than not decides the specific translation strategies and means of achieving optimal relevance. The ultimate evaluation for a translation is whether it effectively conveys the original intention and whether it yields optimal relevance in the target reader's cognitive environment, while the means of achieving optimal relevance do not have to be invariable.This paper aims at arousing translators' awareness of applying relevance-theoretic approach to translating literary works. Meanwhile the author hopes the discussion and methods herewith in this paper can, to some extent, shed light on translators in their prospective fieldwork.
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