A Comparative Study Of The Three Chinese Versions Of Walden From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Translation always elicits long-term hot debates among translators and translation theorists. However, domestic translation studies are usually sporadic and are devoid of a unified theory for the guidance of translation studies in a general sense. In their monograph Relevance:Communication and Cognition, Sperber and Wilson proposed the relevance theory, which is the latest development in the principles of pragmatics. According to the relevance theory, human communication is considered as an ostensive-inferential cognitive process and "every act of ostensive communication communicates a presumption of its own optimal Relevance."(Sperber and Wilson,1986:158)Relevance theory brings about very great influence on translation and bears its significance of guiding translation practices as well. It is noted that this theory is closely related to the cognition of translators and hence the quality of their translation, directly affecting the quality of the translated texts. It facilities our cognition on the pragmatic translation and deepens out understanding of some issues of perception concerning translation. The greatest significance of the theory is that it positively emphasizes the study of translation process.Translation is an indicative and inferential process of intercultural and cross-language communication and the whole process involves three communicators:the original writer, translator and reader of the translated texts. The first process is the communication between the original writer and translator—the original writer passes on the communicative indication to its translator and then the translator infers the communicative indication from the context information of the original text. In this process, the translator remains as the listener.The second process is the communication between the translator and the reader of his translated text. This time, the translator is the speaker and he passes on the information to the reader of his version according to his comprehension on the original text and the communicative indication of his own and then the reader of his version makes inferences from the information in the translated text. Relevance theory can effectively explain and guide translation activities through grasping the innate characteristics. So, introducing the relevance theory, a new perspective and theoretical framework is credited with a theoretical breakthrough in the translation studies and pedagogy.The Chinese versions of Walden is chosen as a case study in this thesis and reflect the relevance theory at work for translation studies. Walden, which was published for the first time as Walden or Life in the Woods is an American book written by noted Transcendentalist—Henry David Thoreau. The work is a personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery and manual for self-reliance. The Chinese version by Xu Chi reads smoothly and gracefully with many passages of fine readability. However, in this book, Thoreau was putting into practice the Transcendentalist belief that one can best "transcend" normality and experience the Ideal, or the Divine through nature and there are a great number of Greek myths, Roman mythology and biblical allusions as well as the peculiar character, events, spot, and situations of the historical period:all these leading to the abstruseness of his works. Flaws were thus almost predictably unavoidable in Xu's version, especially under the guidance of relevance theory.The Chinese versions by Pan Qingling and Dai Huan also reflect the application of the relevance theory in their meticulous treatment with craftsmanship, but if examined from the relevance perspective, weak relevance in renditions can also be found. In order to reconstruct the relevance of the original works, that is, to arouse the same effect as the original readers on the translation readers and pass on the communicative indication of the original author from the translator to the reader at the same time, we must find out the relevance of the original works and represent it in the translated texts so as to enable the reader to get the same relevance as the original reader's for the objective of correct comprehension on the translated texts. From the perspective of relevance theory, the three versions have their own advantages and disadvantages in the choices of words and structures and the treatment of the stylistic arrangements. The thesis makes a contrastive study based on the three Chinese versions of Walden and reveals explicitly the application of the relevance theory to the rendition in the three versions for the purpose of achieving more excellent Chinese versions, correct and effective.