The Explanatory Power Of Gutt's Relevance Translation Theory Over Humor Translation

Ernst-August Gutt's (1991) Relevance Translation Theory is based on Relevance Theory proposed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson (1986), provides a more unified theoretical framework and opens up a unique new perspective for the translation study. As for some top topics in the field of translation, such as"translation is translating the meaning","functional equivalence is a basic conception in translation","the receptor language text should reflect the author's style","the receptor language text should be read like the translated modern language","the receptor language text should be read like the original modern language"etc. In terms of these issues, Gutt (1991) put forward his own viewpoints and made further discussion and powerful explanation on a number of contradictory translation phenomena and their essences.Gutt's (1991) Relevance Translation Theory considers translation as a mechanism of the brain involved in cognitive inferential process and it is verbal communication behaviour. The object of translation study is the mechanism of the brain not utterance itself or the process of producing utterance. A translation should be a receptor language text that interpretively resembled the original. The optimal relevance is the goal that a translator should achieve, and it is also the criterion of translation study. The translator's responsibility is to make effort to make the original author's intentions and the receptor language text reader's expectations meet. According to this requirement, the translator has dual-inferential duties. First of all, s/he must figure out the original author's intentions, or in other words, what contextual assumptions s/he try to convey to readers, meanwhile, the translator has to take into account of the receptor language text reader's cognitive environment in view of deciding on which translation approaches the translator should adopt. By dealing with them flexibly can make such verbal communication successful.Gutt (1991) advances mainly two translation approaches in his theory, i.e. direct translation and indirect translation. Direct translation requires that the translation should convey all the same communicative clues as the original, while indirect translation purports to share all the explicatures and implicatures with the original. Explicature is actually equal to the lexical meaning of a sentence and implicature or communicative clue refers to contextual implication. The two translation approaches essentially take into consideration the translating of both the lexical meanings and contextual implications of the original. In addition, he holds that the translator does not necessarily need to adopt either direct or indirect translation approach from the beginning to the end in a receptor language text, as long as not violating the principle of relevance, s/he could use different approaches according to the actual situations.As a modern Chinese classical work, Fortress Besieged is a satirical comical novel. It is called"the most interesting and painstaking novel ever in the history of Chinese modern literature, maybe the great one."(张泉,1991:38) Its comical style to a large degree is achieved through the use of the humour utterance. Under the guidance of Gutt's Relevance Translation Theory, this thesis chooses Fortress Besieged translated by Jeanne Kelly and Nathan K. Mao (2003) as the case study and analyzes humour translations in the English version, with a view to proving the explanatory power of Relevance Translation Theory on humour translation.