On Translating Literary Images In Chinese Classical Poetry-A Relevance Theory Perspective

Image is the soul of poetry; it leads the reader to an immense space for artistic imagination with a few words. Image in poetry means not only the visual images, but also include concrete intellectual and emotional complex that obtained from other senses, abstractly, as well as cognitive capacity of human being. In a word, the basic construction of image is the inherent unity of subject and object. As a result of the different cultural context, thinking mode and esthetic criterion between the source and target culture, translation of image plays a critical role in the process of poetry translation. What function does the translator take? How does he or she balance between the two cultural systems? These are practical questions to the translator on board. Besides, the role played by readers of the translated text is required to be considered for their understanding of image determines their grasp of the whole poem. Then how do readers with different cultural context relate the image with the intended meanings? In what way does the native culture interfere with their actual understanding? These are some questions that remain unsolved theoretically.Relevance theory is a verbal-communication theory. The criterion proposed in Sperber and Wilson (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. Relevance theory attempts to answer not only philosophical questions about the nature of communication, but also psychological questions about how an interpretation unfolds in the hearer's mind. Though not meant for translation, it is powerful in accounting for the most complicated human activity—translation.This thesis analyzes images translation of Chinese classical poems in the light of relevance theory based on comparison between imagery in western poetry and"Yixiang"in Chinese poetry. Analyzed by relevant theory and with focus on communicative process and dynamic context, poetic imagery in the translation of Chinese classical poetry can be divided into three basic categories: images with similar cognitive contexts, images with different contexts, and images with no corresponding contexts. It illustrates how humans understand the text and concludes that translating is constant procedure of digging for the real meaning through searching for the optimal relevance and the intended implication. Finally it concludes that, what is the most important for a successful image rendering in the image translation of poetry is to clarify the relationship between the image and the cognitive context and the active ability of the target reader should be well considered when approaching different situations.