Interpretation And Translation Of Metaphor From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

This paper aims to analyze the interpretation and translation of metaphor from the perspective of Relevance Theory put forward by Sperber and Wilson in 1986.Gutt, a German scholar, first applied Relevance Theory into translation. Within the framework of Relevance Theory, translation is viewed as interpretive use of language across language boundaries and in pursuit of optimal relevance. In other words, with the help of the current context and the knowledge one has possessed, the hearer can get enough contextual effect through proper processing effort. Gutt also introduces two possible types of translation: direct translation and indirect translation. Direct translation can preserve the stylistic features and communicative clues of the original, according to which the target readers are able to infer the intended interpretation in the context envisaged for the original. Indirect translation places no special constraints on the use of original context and pursues good spontaneous comprehensibility.According to Relevance Theory, metaphor, a natural outcome of some very general cognitive and inferential abilities in verbal communication, requires no special interpretive abilities or procedures. So like all the other utterance interpretation, its understanding is constrained by the presumption of optimal relevance. Metaphor belongs to loose talk and usually conveys a wide array of weak implicatures, producing certain contextual effect and poetic effect. When a metaphor is translated, explication of it will distort the communicator's intention and destroy the poetic effect. In theory, direct translation is no doubt the primary and ideal option. However, under the influence of language, culture and context, the optimal relevance sometimes can not be achieved by direct translation, so indirect translation can serve as a supplement.Metaphors in the case study are all selected from the well-known novel Fortress Besieged. After detailed analysis of the translation's treatments of those metaphors, the quality of them is commented, their inadequacy is pointed out and some suggestions are offered. According to the research, adopting direct translation as the major means to deal with the translation of the metaphors in Fortress Besieged, the translator expects the target readers to obtain adequate contextual effect after some processing effort by themselves. During the pursuit of optimal translation, dynamic context plays a key part. But due to the linguistic and cultural differences between China and the west, the optimal relevance is still not achieved in some metaphor translations.