Comparative Study On Different Versions Of Li Bai's Poems From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Relevance Theory is a kind of theory based on language philosophy, cognitive psychology, communication and study of human behavior. It is the basis of cognitive pragmatics. The essence of relevance theory is the communication and cognition of the natural languages and emphasizes on the effect of cognition on the use of languages. The relevance theory considers that"people understand discourses through human cognitive hypothesis and the condition of human cognitive hypothesis is the relative theory".Translation is an ostensive-inferential process which gives a kind of explanation to source language. According to the expectations of the target language readers, translators can decide their translating intention through the understanding of the authors'communicating intents, the language situations of target languages and the theory of optimal relevance. Relevance theory introduces new angles of pragmatics and cognition into the study of translation. According to relevance theory, translation is a process of double ostensive-inferential communication, in which the translator plays both as a communicator and an audience. The process of translation is to yield optimal relevance. The choice of translation strategy would be based on the translator's accurate assessment of the target language reader's cognitive environment.Tang Poetry is a precious gem of Chinese culture. It is the zenith of classical Chinese poetry. Translating Tang Poetry into English, in the era of cultural globalization, is crucial to the wide spreading of Chinese culture and to the interaction and communication of all the cultures in the whole world.This thesis is a tentative research on the application of relevance theory to translation practice. To illustrate the guiding value of relevance-theoretic approach to translation, the translations of Li Bai's poetry are chosen for case study. By analyzing varied strategies different translators adopt to handle language-specific or cultural-loaded expressions in their translations, the author draws the conclusion: various translation strategies can be justified in their own right and it is the translator's accurate assessment of the target reader's cognitive environment that more often than not decides the specific translation strategies and means of achieving optimal relevance. With dual duties translator must correctly choose proper suppositions and adjust translation strategy in order to seek for the optimal relevance and similarity between the original and version.