Translation In Cultural Context And The Enlightenment Of Relevance Theory

Any form of human communication happens in certain context. Therefore, language communication will be affected and governed by context. Namely, context closely relates to language and plays an important role in language using and study. Many scholars have studied context from various aspects, so the concepts and classifications of it varies from different fields and aims of studies. The concept of "context" was first put forward by Bronislaw Malinowski. Later, Firth, Halliday, Hymes, Lyon, Chen Wangdao (陈望道), Wang Dechun (王德春) Hu Zhuanglin (胡壮麟), Pei Wei (裴文) etc., have made their own contributions to context study. According to the aim of this thesis, I classify context into linguistic context, situational context and cultural context in Chapter Three.The activity of translation happens in two different languages and cultures. Viewing from the aspect of culture, translation is actually the cultural exchange. Specifically speaking, translation is the process that the translator processes the text in which source language cultural is loaded in source language cultural context, then transfer it into the form of target language text in target language cultural context. Basing on this procedure, I classify cultural context into the source language cultural context and the target language cultural context in Chapter Three. To counter the translation affected and governed by the cultural context, scholars put forword kinds of strategies. The representatives should be Eugene. A. Nida and L. Venuti. In Chapter Three, I will discuss the translation strategies and the application of the strategies.Although there is no lack of penetrating views on translation strategies, such as literal translation or free translation, domestication or foreignization, etc., these strategies are contradictory to each other and have not a unified criterion. Therefore, in Chapter Four, I introduce the relevance theory advanced by Sperber and Wilson and expound threeconcepts related to translation in relevance theory: ostensive-inferential communication mode, context and optimal relevance. Relevance theory as the new point of view and method of translation is presented and discussed in this chapter.The translation in cultural context also get enlightenment from the relevance theory: we can regard the tasks of the translator from a^ new angle. In relevance theory, optimal relevance is the ultimate goal. In order to obtain it the translator should explicate the implicatures by inferring and achieve the optimal relevance between the information and the contextual assumptions, then transfer this optimal relevance, i.e. his or her intention to the target language reader in an appropriate way in the target language cultural context to meet the reader's expectation. In Chapter Five, the two tasks of the translator are expounded exhaustively.Certainly, as a new theory, relevance theory is still in the infant stage. Controversies on it can hardly be avoided. But its enlightenment to the translation in the cultural context is obvious.