Approach To Translation From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

LA. Richard (1953) has claimed that "translating is probably the most complex type of event in the history of the cosmos". Just because of the many paradoxes between meanings and structures of different languages, some people even have claimed that translating is impossible. So when conducting translation practice, the translators are found to be in a dilemma as for what strategy should be adopted to cope with the texts with specific linguistic or cultural idiosyncrasy. Relevance theory proposed by Dan Sperber & Deirdre Wilson (2001), though mainly concerned with communication, has introduced new angles of pragmatics and cognition into the study, throwing new light in this problem. In the article "Pragmatic Aspects of Translation: Some Relevance-Theory Observations" and his book Translation and Relevance: Cognition and Context, Gutt (2004) argued that relevance theory provides translators with the best available framework for understanding and practicing translation. According to relevance theory, translation is a process of double ostensive-inferential communication, in which the translator plays both as a communicator and audience. The process of translation is one of inference and searching for relevance in the right context and the aim of translation is to yield optimal relevance. So the choice of translation strategy would be based on the translator's accurate assessment of the target language readers' cognitive environment.This paper is a tentative research on the application of relevance theory to translation practice. So in order to illustrate the guiding value of relevance-theoretic approach to translation, the author of this paper chooses the translations of Lu Xun's Ah Q Zheng Zhuan as special reference. Through examining a variety of strategies different translators adopt to deal with the linguistic-specific and culture-loaded expressions in their respective 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 of a translation is whether it can effectively convey the original intention and whether it can yield optimal relevance in the target readers' cognitive environment, while the means of getting optimal relevance does not necessarily have to be invariable.This paper aims at arousing translators' awareness of applying relevance-theoretic approach to translating literary works. At the same time the author also hopes the discussion and methods in this paper can shed some light on translators in their prospective translating work.