Relevance And Manipulation: A Study Of Literary Translation As A Cognitive And Communicative Process

The present research is a pragmatic exploration of translating process research within literary translation on the basis of the Relevance Theory raised by Sperber and Wilson, aiming to take account of the mental processing effort of translators, especially in their processing of some literary texts, which often appears a tough task because of its delivery manner, inherent cultural connotations and denotations.The present research focuses on the translator's mediating function of adjustment and manipulation in achieving similar cognitive resonance in the receptor audience's mind in a cross-cultural communication. The depiction of translator's processing effort means to probe into the translator's subjective role as a cross-cultural mediator and the feasibility of optimizing the cognitive resonance in a cross-cultural communication, i.e. the translator makes his linguistic choices and adjustments, with the maximal relevance and optimal relevance fulfilled to the utmost, in order to best convey the intended intentions and contextual effects of the original author as well as to cater to the aesthetic expectations and acceptability level of receptor audience.This thesis is elaborated within four chapters:In Introduction, we firstly provide a brief review of the status quo of the development of western translation studies both at home and abroad, which shows a tendency of interdisciplinary interaction among linguistic, psychological, anthropological and cultural phenomena. In the meanwhile, we also need to take into consideration such contextual factors as semantic senses, communicative values, etc. while addressing a text to be translated. What's more, we treat translation as a process instead of a product and focus on the dynamics of the translating process, which has already been proposed by Bell.Chapter One firstly gives a brief introduction of Bell's model of translating process, pointing out that such a complicated model lacks operative feasibilities in analyzing real translating processes. And we also concisely state Gutt's Relevance-Theoretic Approach in terms of his interpretive resemblance, direct and indirect translation. Next, we selectively review Sperber and Wilson's relevance theory, which constitutes the theoretical foundation of the present research, addressing a series of key concepts such as relevance, informative intention and communicative intention, as well as explicature and implicature, etc. In addition, we also draw upon the idea of the translator's role of mediator by Hatim and Mason as well as Wang Tin's cognitive linguistic view on translation for reference.In Chapter Two, we attempt to establish our own theoretic schema of translating process - Relevance-Based Translation Approach, in which we re-divide Sperber and Wilson's concept of relevance into maximal relevance on the reader's part and optimal relevance on the writer's part. In our schema, we treat translating process as an ostensive-inferential communication act. We tentatively analyze the translator's mental processing efforts while exerting his subjectivity in overcoming the cultural differences as well as in seeking cognitive resonance through translation texts. For the sake of convenience, we suggestively propose that the whole translating process be divided into two parts, Discourse Comprehending Process (DCP) and Discourse Producing Process (DPP), which take place in translator's mind almost simultaneously or time and again in real life.In Chapter Three and Chapter Four, we will discuss in detail how a translator comprehends the intended intentions in original texts in the DCP through his/her inference of strong and weak communication, explicature and implicature, as well as procedural meaning, and how one makes adjustments and manipulations in target cognitive environment motivated by one's consideration on linguistic context, social-cultural context, stylistic indicator, as well as receptor's aesthetic expectations and acceptability level in the DPP.Finally, we conclude with a review of the attempts we've made in recording the translator's mental efforts while analyzing a piece of literary discourse, as well as the defects we can not ignore in the present thesis, i.e. we can't be completely impartial in addressing literary translating process because we can't analyze sufficient materials within such a short time span.A piece of literature is often so variable and open to multiple interpretations, we hold that in literary translating teaching and practices we should never restrict ourselves to any "key version". What's more, translating is an audience-oriented activity, therefore every translator or student involved in translating activities should be encouraged to reread the literature in hand, making appropriate adjustments to cater to their potential target audience.