The Translation Of Metaphors By Relevance Translation Theory

Metaphor as a language phenomenon has always been studied by scholars, not only rhetoricians but also linguists, philosophers, and psychologists. With the development of linguistics study, especially since the end of the 20th century, a series of theories on the explanation of metaphor has emerged. In 1986, Dan Sperber and Deidre Wilson proposed a theory of relevance in their book Relevance:Communication and Cognition. Their Relevance Theory provided a new way to study metaphor using a process of interpreting communication and cognition. According to this theory, metaphor is a kind of"loose talk", an ordinary utterance which requires no special interpretive abilities but demands extra processing effort. This interpretation of metaphor not only expands and develops former metaphor studies, it also points out that metaphor is a language phenomenon and a way of thinking. Since most metaphors come from every day life, they can reflect many features of a nation including history, economy, geography, customs and psychology. Therefore, proper translation of metaphor plays an important role in cross-cultural communication which makes translation a complex and multi-faceted task. In 1953, I.A. Richards claimed that translating is probably the most complex type of event in the history of the cosmos. (I.A Richards, 1953)Because even though translation seems to be simply an interlingual transformation, it is really a cross-cultural communication event which involves two languages and the conveyance of meaning across two cultures. This understanding has already been accepted in the translation world as translators'attentions have shifted from emphasis on linguistic transfer to cultural transfer.Ernst-August Gutt's Relevance Translation Theory, based on the Sperber-Wilson theory, states the process of translation consists of two stages of communication in which the translator plays the double role of both reader and communicator. As the reader in the first stage, s/he needs to recognize the optimal relevance envisaged by the writer and understand the original meaning of the text. In the second stage, the translator becomes a communicator and needs to express that understanding to the target readers in a way that is optimally relevant to them. Clearly in each stage, optimal relevance from the original text to the target text becomes the translation goal.This thesis holds that when translating a metaphor, the translator should first decide to what degree s/he intends to keep the original metaphor intact. Then, the translator must consider the cognitive environments of target readers and reconstruct the image of the original metaphor. This method is valid no matter which strategy is used, direct translation, indirect translation or a combination of both as long as optimal relevance is achieved.