Metahor Translation From The Persective Of Relevance Theory

Relevance Theory was proposed by Sperber and Wilson in1986. RelevanceTheory assumes that communication can go smoothly if the two communicatorsfollow the relevance principle. There are two factors influencing relevance and theyare contextual effect and processing effort. Strong contextual effect and weakprocessing effort mean strong relevance. Human communication is a process ofachieving optimal relevance: to get adequate contextual effect by pulling as littleprocessing effort as possible.According to Relevance Theory, the comprehension of metaphor, like otherutterances, is confined by relevance. When translating metaphor, the translator firstneeds to understand the metaphor in the source language and form his owncommunicative intention, and then he should consider the cognitive ability and thecognitive environments of the target readers and choose suitable translation strategiesto express the meaning of the metaphor in the source language. No matter whatstrategy he applies, literal translation or free translation, as long as it complies withRelevance Theory, and can get optimal relevance and produce nearly the same effecton the target readers as the original readers, it is an acceptable one.This thesis explores metaphor translation in the three Chinese versions of TheWoman in White, from the perspective of the Relevance Theory. And the authorchooses six kinds of metaphors in the book to analyze, which are game metaphors,sensory metaphors, plant metaphors, animal metaphors, weather metaphors and liquidmetaphors. This research aims to combine Relevance Theory and metaphor translationand attempts to evaluate the quality of the metaphor translation and look into thereasons behind it. The study indicates that when translating metaphor, the translatorsprefer the strategy of free translation and their communicative intention is to offer the target readers an opportunity to have enough contextual effects after making necessaryprocessing effort.