A Relevance Theoretic Approach To The Translation Of Metaphors In The Poems Of Hongloumeng

This dissertation explores metaphor translation in Hongloumeng from the perspective of Relevance Theory.It concerns the nature and the process of human communication. The key concept of Relevance Theory is relevance. It is defined in terms of contextual effect and processing effort. The greater the contextual effect achieved by processing a speech, the greater the relevance; the greater the processing effort spent, the lower the relevance. Relevance theory claims that human communication is characterized by the search for optimal relevance, that is, to achieve adequate contextual effect without pulling gratuitous processing effort.Metaphor has been a heated topic among scholars since Aristotle's time. A number of definitions are provided by different schools. Relevance Theory, which focuses on the cognitive process, did not care to give a specific definition to metaphor, seeing it as a normal language use consistent to the principle of relevance. Therefore, Newmark's definition of metaphor is borrowed in the dissertation.The case study includes an exhaustive-quantitative research on the use of metaphors in the poems of Hongloumeng and the translations of the Yangs and Hawkes. By comparing the statistics of metaphor use, we intend to reveal how the metaphors of the source text are preserved in the translations from a panoramic view. Moreover, some attempt explorations on the issues of translatability of metaphor, identifying metaphors that are particularly difficult to translate and the difference in the respective handling of metaphor by the Yangs and Hawkes.Based on the key concepts of Relevance Theory, a scheme of evaluating the translation of metaphors is constructed on the basis of comparing the logical, encyclopedic, lexical model of the original and translated metaphors, together with consideration to another two factors of the author's intention and the strength of implicatures/poetic effect of the original metaphor. This scheme is applied in the case study to analyze some specific metaphors selected from the poems in Hongloumeng. This part of the case study further consolidated the findings drawn from the statistics and achieved some further conclusions about the translatability of metaphor as well as the principles and methods of metaphor translation.The last part of the dissertation further explored the root of misunderstanding in the translations of metaphors and tried to propose some strategies to help solving the problem from the perspective of Relevance Theory.