A Study Of Lin Yutang's English Version Of Fu Sheng Liu Ji From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson developed their relevance theory(RT) based on their understanding of human psychology and cognition,believing that communication is an ostensive-inferential process,in which "the communicator" provides ostension and "the audience" infers the communicator's intention behind the ostension.The pursuit of optimal relevance on both parties of the communication contributes to making communication smooth and successful.Their student,Ernst-August Gutt, was the first to introduce this theory into the field of translation studies.He claims that translation,as a type of interlingual communication,is also a cognitive and psychological process rather than a process of mere linguistic transfer,thus shedding a new light on the nature of translation,and highlighting the importance of translators.This thesis is a study of Lin Yutang's English version of Fu Sheng Liu Ji from the perspective of RT.After a brief introduction of the thesis in Chapter One,the second chapter begins with a short discussion and evaluation of two traditional models of communication,i.e.the code model and the inferential model.These two models have been unified from the perspective of human cognition through RT advocates who formulate the ostensive-inferential communication model.The rest of this chapter is devoted to an introduction to RT and a discussion of a number of important concepts related to RT.The third chapter is concerned with the relationship between RT and translation.According to the relevance-theoretic approach to translation proposed by Ernst-August Gutt,translation is an inferential communication process in which both parties involved(i.e.the translator and the target reader) seek for the optimal relevance between the translation and the target readers' cognitive context.A detailed analysis of the strategies for producing successful translations from the perspective of RT is presented in Chapter Four,in which Lin Yutang's translation of Fu Sheng Liu Ji is chosen as data for a case study.In the next chapter,the author discusses the important role that the translator,one of the cognitive subjects,assumes in the two ostensive-inferential processes involved in translating,first as an audience and second as a communicator.The translator pursues the optimal relevance in understanding ST, and employs various translation strategies to make his/her translation fit into the TL readers' cognitive context.In these processes,the translator's subjectivity and communicative competence are crucial.The thesis reaches a conclusion that RT provides a cognitive framework for translation that emphasizes communicative competence rather than the importance of specific prescriptive translation principles.Furthermore,RT suggests that we view translation as a dynamic process that entails various translation strategies.In reviewing RT and attempting to study the merits of Lin Yutang's translation of Fu Sheng Liu Ji under the framework of RT,combined with an investigation of Lin Yutang's life and cultural-linguistic knowledge,the author comes up with some suggestions,which may prove helpful to translators in their cross-cultural communication practices.