Analysis Of Translation In Two English Versions Of Luotuo Xiangzi From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Translation is a complicated process. There have always been controversies over translation theories, especially that of literary works. When in translation practice, the translator is bound to be in a dilemma as to what strategy should be adopted to handle text with specific linguistic or cultural features. Relevance Theory (RT) was first proposed by French scholar Dan Sperber and British scholar Deirdre Wilson in their joint work Relevance: Communication and Cognition in1986, and has since been improved and applied to various fields of the humanities and social science. Translation is no exception.According to this theory, translation is a kind of communication, and the ultimate goal for translation is its optimal relevance to the source text. The rule of optimal relevance is believed to be able to match the source text communicator’s intention with the target text audience’s expectation. In essence, translation is a process of double ostensive-inferential communication, in which the translator plays both as a communicator and an audience. The process of translation is the one of inference and searching for relevance and the aim of translation is to find optimal relevance.Wilson’s student, Ernst-August Gutt, is considered to be the first to apply RT to translation studies. However, Gutt just only devoted himself to explaining the nature of translation from the perspective of RT and he used very few examples from real practice of translation. This thesis tries to discuss the functions of Relevance Theory in translation practice. To illustrate the guiding value of Relevance Theory to translation, the English versions of Lao She’s Luotuo Xiangzi are chosen for case study to analyze varied strategies that different translators adopt to handle language—specific or cultural-loaded expressions in their translations.By analyzing varied strategies different translators adopt to handle language-specific or cultural-loaded expressions in their translations, the author draws the conclusion:various translation strategies can be justified to their interest, and it is the translator’s accurate assessment of the target reader’s cognitive environment that more often than not decides the specific translation strategies and means of achieving optimal relevance. The ultimate evaluation for a translation is whether it effectively conveys the original intention and whether it yields optimal relevance in the target readers’cognitive environment, while the means of achieving optimal relevance do not have to be invariable. Therefore, the Relevance Theory sheds a new light on the nature of translation, highlighting the importance of translators.Now there are lots of articles and theses on Relevance Theory, but most of them are the Relevance Theory itself. The applications of Relevance Theory to literary translation are not adequate at all. This thesis is a study of two English versions of Luotuo Xiangzi from the perspective of RT, which analyzes the English versions of Luotuo Xiangzi using examples and comparisons. In the process of comparisons, optimal relevance and reader cognition are also analyzed. Example analyses are mainly aimed at the process for some specific language phenomena with strong Chinese cultural characteristics. There are four chapters in this thesis. Chapter One is an introduction, the author mainly states the background, method, literature review and the structure of this thesis. The second chapter presents theoretical framework: Relevance Theory and its effects on translation. From the perspective of the theory’s effects on translation, this chapter continues to analyze translation essence, translation process, translation standard, translation strategy and so on. Chapter Three briefly introduces Lao She, his works besides Luotuo Xiangzi, and the four English versions especially Evan King’s Rickshaw Boy and Shi Xiaojing’s Camel Xiangzi for study in this thesis. Chapter Four analyzes Lao She’Luotuo Xiangzi from the linguistic perspectives under Relevance Theory. At last the author hopes the discussion in this thesis could, to some extent, shed light on translators in their prospective fieldwork.