Translation Of Appellations In Hong Lou Meng: A Relevance-theoretic Perspective

This thesis studies the translation of appellations in Hong Lou Meng from the perspective of relevance theory. Through comparison and analysis, the author aims at finding the principles for the translation of appellations as well as the criteria for their evaluation.Relevance theory, a cross-disciplinary theory, provides us with a new perspective for translation studies. It claims that the nature of communication is an ostensive-inferential process. In a successful communication, the communicator (speaker) and the audience (listener) are able to coordinate well on the choice of code and context: the communicator produces the utterance after making correct assumptions about the codes and contextual information that the audience will use in comprehending the utterance, and the audience make inference about the communicator's intention by using whatever code and contextual information he/she can find.Translation can be regarded as an interlingual communication that is composed of two rounds of communications, during which the translator bridges the writer and the target reader by acting as both the communicator and the audience. In the first round, a translator acts as the audience who is supposed to get the right intention of the writer, and in the second round, he/she acts as the communicator who should make manifest his/her interpretation of the writer's intention to the target reader through appropriate translations.From the novel Hong Lou Meng, 38 sentences are collected in which different appellations occur. The corresponding translations of these sentences were also gathered from its two English versions. After studying them carefully from the perspective of relevance theory, the author finds that the principle of relevance is applicable to both the evaluation and the practice of the translation of appellations. Evaluating the translation of an appellation of any kind dwells on whether it communicates the intention of the original term and whether it requires unnecessary processing effort. While translating an appellation, a translator is supposed to make the intention of the writer meet the expectation of the target reader. He/she should recognize the writer's intention of the use of the term, assess the cognitive environment and the expectation of the target reader, and finally express his/her interpretation of the writer's intention in an appropriate translation which should not cost unnecessary processing effort.