On Translation Of Chinese Idioms Under The Relevance Theory

This thesis will pay special attention on the English version of Mr. Jia Pingwa’s The Country Wife and take some inevitable references on the studies of Turbulence—another work of Jia Pingwa’s, which was translated by Howard Goldblatt-to study the translations of Chinese idioms in The Country Wife from the perspective of Relevance Theory.Relevance theory, the pragmatic theory of human communication and cognition, was brought up and systematically exposed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson in1986Relevance: Communication and Cognition. In light of the strong explanatory power of Relevance Theory, E. A. Gutt, one of Wilson’s students, tried to introduce the theory into the field of translation studies. And he published his doctoral dissertation Translation and Relevance:Cognition and Context in1991. Besides the achievements made in western world, there are also some significant achievements in China. Dr. Zhao Yanchun expressed his positive agreements towards the influence on translation exerted by Relevance Theory in his article The Explanatory Power of Relevance Theory on Translation published in Modern Foreign Languages.Idioms, which reflect the national culture with the implication of the national character, are described as the pearls in a language. In the broad terms, the idiom generally refers to the well-known idiomatic expressions that people loved, for example:proverbs, twisters, saying, slang, jargon, patois and so on. Based on the previous achievements on Chinese idiom translation, this study will specify on the idioms translation in The Country Wife for deepening studies, and to draw the basic strategies and methods from the perspective of Relevance Theory. Moreover, this study will take further investigations and demonstrations on the explanatory power of Relevance Theory and prove the mutual applicability of Relevance Theory and idioms translation.