On C-E Translation Of Publicity Materials In China Today From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

In modern society, the development of economy and international exchanges give rise to a growing need for publicity materials and their translation. At present, since C-E translation is still playing a prominent role in publicity materials, its quality has a great impact on the effect of international communication. Foreign publicity is characterized by the principle that "foreign publicity is different from publicity in China", which is determined by its particular target readers. Its main target readers are the average foreign readers who know little about China. In view of this, the translation of the publicity materials should differ from common C-E translation. The research on translation of the publicity materials is far from enough and some of them lack the theoretical guidance.This thesis is a tentative endeavor to study C-E translation of publicity materials from the perspective of relevance theory. By analyzing some articles in Chinese and their corresponding English versions which are selected from the magazine of China Today, the author intends to find out whether relevance theory can be used to account for C-E translation of publicity materials. And the method of selecting and analyzing data is adopted in the research process.The thesis begins with the literature review of research on relevance theory, relevance-theory-based translation study and the status quo of researches on C-E translation of publicity materials. Many scholars have done a lot of researches on relevance theory. Gutt was the first one to apply this theory to translation study, which changed people's understanding of translation. From the perspective of relevance theory, translation is viewed as an inferential process involving mechanism of human brain, and also an interlingual communicative activity.The central concepts of relevance theory consist of cognitive environment, context, descriptive use, interpretive use and relevance. In the framework of relevance theory, verbal communication is regarded as an ostensive-inferential cognitive process, and comprehension of utterances as a cognitive activity. The process of translation involves two rounds of communications, in which the translator plays a double role in both audience and communicator. Translation is also an ostensive-inferential process, in which the translator plays a crucial role in evaluating the cognitive environment of the writer and the cognitive environment and ability of the target reader. The same is true in the C-E translation of publicity materials. The translator should take the target readers' background knowledge, understanding ability and interest into consideration, and make an evaluation of their expectation and try to achieve the optimal relevance of the source text and the translation.China Today is the only comprehensive multilingual monthly magazine dedicated to foreign reporting in China. Fifty articles in Chinese and their corresponding English articles are selected from the Chinese edition and English edition of China Today respectively as research data. And meanwhile the author summarizes the translation methods adopted by the translators in the process of translation and then makes an analysis from the perspective of relevance theory. Not all of the articles in each issue of the Chinese edition have been translated into English. The source texts are chosen according to the target readers' expectation. Interpretive translation and deletion methods are often employed by translators, which helps to make the translators' intention explicit in order to make the intention and expectation meet. There are a lot of differences between the titles of the target and the source texts. All these differences are the adjustments made by the translators according to the various cognitive environments, modes of thinking and social-cultural background knowledge of the target readers. This is the descriptive use of language in interlingual translation. Foreign publicity materials have informative function, and in order to achieve this function translation strategies such as paraphrase, annotation and recreation are used. And this is the interpretive use of language in interlingual translation. In the translation process, translators usually take into consideration target readers' cognitive environment, expectation and context so as to offer the optimal contextual effects for the target readers.The author summarizes the phenomenon of the C-E translation of publicity material in the hope that the research from the perspective of relevance theory can be beneficial to the C-E translation of such texts so as to facilitate international communication.