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A Study Of Chinese-English News Translation From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Posted on:2009-11-24Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:L M YanFull Text:PDF
GTID:2155360245962792Subject:English Language and Literature
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With the rapid growth of news translation and the multidiscipline of translation studies, the study of Chinese-English (C-E) news translation is attracting increasingly more attention from translation scholars. Accordingly, there have been various attempts to investigate C-E news translation in the recent years. Naturally, such studies have obtained noteworthy understandings of the process of C-E news translation but are at the same time not immune from certain weaknesses in their philosophical guidelines, theoretical bases, methods and procedures, objects and scope of study or other aspects. Based on the progress already made, the present study intends, by adopting the dialectical systemic view of translation advanced by Jia Zhengchuan as its philosophical guideline, utilizing the relevance theory of Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson and the relevance theory of translation formulated by Ernest-August Gutt as its theoretical basis, mainly taking news texts in China Today as examples, and adopting an integrated methodology using both theoretical and empirical methods and procedures, to conduct an integrated study of C-E news translation so as to achieve a better understanding of, and propose some skills and strategies for, the practice of C-E news translation.In the dialectical systemic view of translation, translation is a complex human activity system involving a double process of discourse communication, comprising source text (ST) addresser, translator, target text (TT) addressee, ST, TT, principles, strategies and other components with nonlinear interrelationships, interacting with situational and socio-cultural contexts and exhibiting itself as a process of operation on linguistic, cognitive, social and other planes according to certain laws. According to relevance theory and the relevance theory of translation, communication is an ostensive-inferential process following the principle of relevance (i.e.,"every act of ostensive communication communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance,"where"optimal relevance"means"achievement of maximum contextual effects at minimum processing effort"), translation as an interlingual interpretive use of language is a special case of communication involving a dual ostensive-inferential process following the principle of relevance. From the above view and theories, we may deduce a systemic understanding of C-E news translation as follows:C-E news translation as a process of C-E news communication and interpretive use of language involves two ostensive-inferential processes. In the first process, after the ST author makes ostensive his intention in the ST in Chinese, the translator infers his intention according to the principle of relevance with the help of the evidences such as the utterances and contextual assumptions provided by the ST. In the second process, the translator, as a receptor-cum-addresser, relays in English what he has got in the first round to the TT readers in an ostensive way, again according to the principle of relevance. In order to achieve the success of communication, i.e., for the TT reader to obtain maximal relevance by realizing maximum contextual effects with minimum processing effort, the translator is required to make assumptions about the target readers'cognitive environment and their expectations and then choose suitable translation strategies to make the TT resemble the ST in relevant respects (i.e. to meet the ST's intentions with the TT readers'expectations). Due to the different cognitive environments of the Chinese ST readers and the English TT audience, C-E news translators need to adopt such translating techniques or strategies as supplement, abridgement and adaptation.The C-E news texts of China Today and other sources are examples which well illustrate the process of C-E news translation and reveal the effectiveness of the above-mentioned translating techniques and strategies.The results of this study may facilitate the present C-E news translation practice in China. Hopefully, this study may also compensate for the drawbacks of the existing studies and promote the development of C-E news translation theory. It can therefore be said to be both practically and theoretically relevant to the field of translation.
Keywords/Search Tags:Chinese-English news translation, translation techniques and strategies, relevance theory, relevance theory of translation, dialectical systemic view of translation
PDF Full Text Request
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