On Fiction Style Translation From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

This thesis, from the perspective of relevance theory, proves the interpretive power of direct translation on fiction style translation. With the guide of relevance-theoretic translation, the author states that if the source language readers and target language readers don’t share similar cognitive environment, the translator can also apply indirect translation to recast communicative clues to assure the translation’s faithfulness to the original text, achieving optimal relevance.Relevance theory, proposed by Sperber and Wilson, is the most influential pragmatic theory in western linguistic world. The key point of it lies in cognition and communication. Considering translation as an ostensive-inferential process, it focuses on the effect that the cognitive context has on the inference of the communicator’s intention. The relevance principle refers to the inter-relationship between different things related to the audience’s contextual and cognitive environment. In the process of interpretation, one should try to emphasize the contextual effect to a large extent and reduce the inference effort in order to reach optimal relevance.Ernst-Gutt, the one who first introduced relevance theory into translation field, puts forward relevance-theoretic translation. It considers translation as a mechanism of the brain concerning cognitive inferential process. As a verbal communication behavior, translation study mainly focuses on the mechanism of the brain. The goal of translation is to achieve optimal relevance. The translator should make great efforts to make the original author’s intentions and the receptor language text reader’s expectation meet. Gutt also puts forward direct translation and indirect translation. The translation of fiction style is mainly relying on direct translation. By preserving the communicative clues of source language, the translator could convey the original text’s style to the target language readers.This study focuses on Fortress Besieged. Firstly, it is a classical work in modern Chinese literature with its satirical and comical style. Its great success largely depends on its abundant Chinese culture significance, stylistic excellence in employing the humor and satire. Secondly, the first English version of Fortress Besieged translated by Jeanne Kelly and Nathan K. Mao (2003) is a very controversial one in translated field. The two translators mainly adopted direct translation in order to preserve original version’s humorous and satirical style.Last but not least, the author makes a summary of the major findings and limitations in this study, and then puts forward some suggestions for the future research in relevant fields.