A Study Of EST Translation From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Traditional translation research is usually literature-oriented, while, in practice, translation for science and technology takes a major share in factual translation activities, which really does not conform to the trend of more and more frequent international communication in science and technology. This thesis makes a tentative study of the EST translation (English for science and technology) from the perspective of relevance theory because relevance theory is very powerful in accounting for and guiding the practice of EST translation.Within the framework of relevance theory, translation is a double ostensive-inferential communication process, which involves three parties: the source text author, the translator and the target text reader. Under the guidance of relevance theory, a translator has to draw inferences from the stimulus to get comprehension of the intentions according to the contextual information of the source text, combine the intentions with the cognitive environment of the target reader, decide what to interpret and how to interpret and choose the appropriate approach.This thesis aims to explore how relevance theory is applied to EST translation and how useful this theory is for EST translation practice and how EST translation can be accounted for in the relevance-theoretic framework.First of all, the author introduces the basic information about relevance theory and the present situation of research on EST from the perspective of relevance theory. Secondly, the thesis introduces some important notions on relevance theory including the notion of ostensive-inferential communication, cognitive environment, context and contextual effect, relevance and principle of relevance, and the notion of explicature and implicature. Then, the thesis discusses translation in the framework of relevance theory, which points out that translation can be viewed as a kind of ostensive-inferential communication involving three parties: the source text author, the translator and the target text reader. The concept, classification, characteristics and the existing theories on EST are respectively presented successively. In the following main body of the thesis, the author researches EST translation from the perspective of relevance theory in detail. Wherein, the cognitive components in EST translation including language knowledge, scientific knowledge and context information are analyzed. Then it discusses the inferring process in EST translation. Last but not the least, the author explains some strategies adopted to achieve optimal relevance in EST translation. In the end of the thesis, the author summarizes the main idea of the author about translating EST into Chinese from the perspective of relevance theory.