A Study On The Cultural Mistranslation Of Chinese Classical Poetry From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Cultural mistranslation refers to cultural defect, commonly occurring in translation activities. It can be subjectively classified into unintentional cultural mistranslation (UCM) and intentional cultural mistranslation (ICM). As a carrier of Chinese traditional culture, Chinese classical poetry (CCP) owns abundant cultural elements, which will cause cultural mistranslation in the process of translation. Scholars at home and abroad have also done some researches in this respect, though a commonly accessible and reasonable explanation failed to be agreed on.Proposed by Sperber and Wilson, relevance theory (RT), functioning as the foundation of cognitive pragmatics, mainly concerns with the communication and cognition of language and assumes that human communication activities are designed to achieve optimal relevance. In1991, Gutt applied RT to the translation sphere and pointed out that, as a special form of communication, translation serves as an interpretive use of language aiming at achieving optimal relevance.This thesis with focus on the analysis of cultural mistranslation of CCP based on RT aims to offer a new perspective for the research in this field. The study figures out the contributing factors to UCM and the communication failures being likely to cause. The research also finds that, according to the requirement of the contextual effect, the translator can choose appropriate translation strategies to achieve the optimal relevance of the source language and the target language under the guidance of RT. Meanwhile the reasonability of these strategies is discussed based on the target readers’accessibility in language and culture, which aims to make the author’s communicative intention be in consistence with the target readers’expectation. In brief, the basic principle of the CCP translation is to make sure the target readers can appreciate the original text as the original readers do, through applying appropriate strategies and searching an optimal joint of two cultures. This thesis has a positive practical significance for researching in CCP translation and spreading Chinese traditional culture.