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Cultural Default And Reconstruction In Foreign Publicity Translation From The View Of Relevance Theory

Posted on:2010-02-15Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:Y SongFull Text:PDF
GTID:2155360275495158Subject:English Language and Literature
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This paper studies cultural default in translation for foreign publicity from relevance-theoretic perspective. Relevance theory provides a sound explanation for cultural default and makes reconstruction of cultural default possible.As a pragmatic theory interpreting communication, first put forward by Sperber and Wilson in 1986,the influence of relevance theory has greatly gone beyond the field of pragmatics itself, and even extended to the field of translation. In his book Translation and Relevance: Cogniton and Context,Gutt, a student of Wilson, who applied relevance theory to translation , suggests that translation is an instance of interpretive use. Moreover, translations seek to resemble their originals interpretively. Translating is constrained by the principle of relevance. According to the relevance theory, the process of searching for relevance is a process of cognition and inference and also a process of taking efforts. Within the relevance framework, translation can be defined as a dynamic act of ostensive-inferential verbal interpretation. The explanation to translation with the relevance-theoretic approach is dynamic and dialectical, which has seen the essence of translation and has positive significance in guiding the practice of translation.Cultural default, a commonly seen but often ignored cultural phenomenon, is defined as the absence of relevant cultural background knowledge shared by the author and his/her intended readers. The construction of the coherence of cultural default in a text is secured in that the readers can retrieve the relevant cultural information from their memory schemata. But in translation, since it is culture-specific and the cognitive environment of the source text writer and that of the target text reader are different, cultural default of the original texts often turns out to be tough, and may probably lead in misleading or incoherent understanding in cross-cultural communication. The misleading and misunderstanding may greatly affect the communication effect of foreign publicity materials, with its foreign-readership-oriented particularity.With the rapid development of economic, political, as well as cultural globalization, foreign publicty translation plays an increasingly important role.The little knowledge of the target audience of foreign publicity about Chinese history and culture makes foreign publicity translation different from other types of traslation. This paper adopts publicity materials as a particular type of texts of translation and discusses its main characteristics. The thesis attempts to probe into the various aspects of the influence imposed by cultural default on translation for foreign publicity as well as many problems caused by cultural default in translation practices in the hope of finding some practical approaches to translating texts with cultural default.In translation practices, nevertheless, translation problems arising from cultural default are not rare due to the translator's incompetence in cultural knowledge or inadequate assumption of TL readers'cultural knowledge, or sometimes due to the interference of cultural presupposition in the translator's interpretation of the SL texts. The author of this thesis tries to analyse the phenomenon of cultural default from the relevance-theoretic view and attempts to analyse it in the rarely touched branch of translation, foreign publicity translation. By so doing, the study hopes to shed some light on the study of this translation branch with a view to promote a better understanding of and friendship towards China.
Keywords/Search Tags:foreign publicity translation, Relevance Theory, cultural default, reconstruction
PDF Full Text Request
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