A Study Of Translation Quality In The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

The heated and controversial issues about the quality of translation have caught many people's attention. Comparing translation theories both at home and abroad, it is not difficult to find that a good translation should be the one which is largely faithful to the original texts and any improper translation may affect the quality of translation. By comparing with some traditional ideas of the topic, the thesis aims to offer a more objective account of the quality of translation from the point of Relevance Theory, which provides a quite new perspective for explaining. It is an admitted fact that the concept of "faithfulness" or "equivalence" has long been the dominant idea of good translation in various translation theories both in China and in the West. However, some scholars hold the opinion that in the past decades there existed inadequacies of traditional equivalence-based translation theories. Thus, a more proper theory is called for.As is known to all that with the development of world globalization and increasing interactions between people, translation is regarded as an inter-linguistic and/or inter-cultural communication that is composed of two rounds of communications, during which the translator bridges the source writer and the target reader by acting as both the communicator and the audience. In the light of Relevance Theory, the success of a translation depends on how well it meets the basic criterion for all human communications, that is, consistency with the principle of relevance. The criterion proposed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson in 1986 is based on a fundamental assumption about human cognition. The assumption is that human cognition is relevance-oriented: we pay attention to information that seems relevant to us. Thus, the study of the quality of translation under the framework of Relevance Theory makes us aware that Relevance Theory is the effective means to seek translation understanding, that what is translated is either informative or communicative intention, and that pursuit of optimal relevance is an important translation criterion.Relevance Theory, put forward by some scholars both at home and abroad, is a real breakthrough to the traditional ideas of faithfulness and equivalence and an important complement to translation theories. Although Relevance Theory is still on its immature stage, it provides us a new perspective to look at communication and hence translation, a cognitive approach. On the foundation study of the previous theorists, the author offers her own understanding. By citing some examples in the thesis, the author mainly discusses principle of relevance, presumption of optimal relevance, interpretive resemblance and faithfulness and relevance-theoretic context to illustrate that at present, Relevance Theory is the most effective means which can help us to achieve faithfulness to the original.