A Study Of Chinese-English Translation Of Features In News Reporting: From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

News is the most important media for the transmission of information. With the advent of economic globalization and the information explosion, the political, economic, and cultural exchange between china and the world is indispensable to news communication. However, media in the western countries produces biased, negative, and even distorted reports about China. The properly translated English versions of Chinese news play an important role in providing the real information about china's development, Chinese culture and Chinese people's spiritual situations.At present, the domestic news translation research focus on the hard news, whereas, the study related to feature translation is not paid enough attention it deserves, though the rich information, deep human touch, interesting customs, and stylish language in features are more easily to hold the foreign readers. On the recognition of the dilemma between inadequate studies on C-E (Chinese-English) feature translation and its great importance for intercultural communication, the author of this thesis attempts to study the C-E feature translation from the perspective of relevance theory, aiming to find the specific translation methods for C-E feature translation by adopting the methodology of quantitative and qualitative study with the illustration of examples selected from Chinese authentic magazine China Today.The prerequisite for the application of relevance theory into translation is that translation is a process of communication. The core of relevance theory is that communication is an ostensive-inferential process. From the angle of relevance-theoretic translation theory, translation is a double ostensive-inferential process involving the original author, translator, and the target reader, in which the translator plays the role of audience in the first ostensive-inferential process and the communicator in the second. The author of the thesis explains the compatibility of relevance theory with C-E feature translation in the following three aspects:first, C-E feature translation is actually an interlingual and cross-cultural communication between Chinese and English; second, there is resemblance between the seeking of contextual effects during the ostensive-inferential process and the seeking of communication effects during the communicative process; and the last, C-E feature translation process can be analyzed clearly from the perspective of RT.According to compatibility of relevance theory with C-E feature translation, from the perspective of relevance theory, especially the direct and indirect translation modes proposed by Gutt, the author of this thesis tentatively categorizes several specific translation methods through the quantitative and qualitative study on the 12 pairs of Chinese features and their English counterparts selected from Chinese authentic magazine China Today. As to direct translation mode, the methods of literal translation and transliteration plus note can be used. With regard to indirect translation mode, there are far more methods than that of direct translation, such as amplification, omission, hop editing mainly realized through the adaptation in the textual level and rewriting. The methods of free translation and changing implicature into explicature are used when the other methods can not solve the problem. The methods for indirect translation mode are much more than that of direct translation mode is because indirect translation picks up most of the continuum between the two. Anyway, all of these methods serve for the target readers' ultimate aim to get maximal contextual effects with least processing efforts.The results of the present study show that relevance theory is much persuasive for the interpretation of C-E feature translation. And the present study is helpful for getting out of the dilemma between inadequate studies on C-E feature translation and its great importance for intercultural communication. Besides, these methods may enlighten the C-E feature translators, and eventually promotes the development of C-E feature translation study.