Relevance Theory And Metaphor Translation

Metaphor exists in literary work as well as in our daily life. Relevance Theory provides a new perspective for metaphor translation.This thesis studies metaphor translation in the light of Relevance Theory, with the purpose to prove that some notions of Relevance Theory can explain the merits and demerits of the translation of metaphor, and tries to prove that the principle of relevance can guide translators in making superior decision in translating metaphor. The examples analyzed in the thesis are taken from a famous Chinese novel Fortress Besieged.The thesis contains six chapters. Chapters I is the introduction part, in which literature review and the structure of the thesis are given. Chapter II introduces some notions in Relevance Theory, such as ostensive-inferential, contextual effect, processing effort, optimal relevance, etc. Translation is considered a kind of communication, and then a translation criterion—Eugene A. Nida's function equivalence is briefly introduced, the ultimate purpose of relevance or optimal relevance is to realize function equivalence. Chapter III gives a full introduction to metaphor and metaphor translation. Several methods of metaphor translation are discussed and some of them are used in Chapter V to classify the metaphor in Fortress Besieged. Chapter IV discusses metaphor translation from the perspective of Relevance Theory and talks about how direct and indirect translation deal with metaphor translation. Chapter V is the main part of the thesis. First Fortress Besieged and its metaphor are introduced. Then according to the discussion in the first several chapters, metaphors in Fortress Besieged are divided into five types (that is, retain the metaphor, retain the metaphor with an annotation, retain the metaphor with supplement, replace the image, and render the metaphor by a paraphrase) and typical examples are analyzed to explain the merits and demerits of the translation in the light of Relevance Theory, and function equivalence is the ultimate purpose of relevance or optimal relevance. The last chapter is the conclusion part.Relevance Theory is powerful in explaining the translation of the metaphor, and the translator should make decisions in accordance with the principle of relevance.