On Dialogue Translation In Three Kingdoms From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Sperber and Wilson, the founder of Relevance Theory, think that communication is akind of process of ostensive-inference, and both the two parties of communication want toreach optimal relevance. Whether the communication is successful or not will depend on twoelements: contextual effects and processing effort. when other things being equal, the morecontextual effects derived by the hearer, the more relevance there is between the two partiesof communication; equally, the less processing effort paid by the hearer, the more relevancethere is between the two parties of communication. Context can be further divided intolinguistic context, situational context and cultural context. Using relevance theory to explainthe phenomenon and problems in Translation provides a new perspective to translationstudies.Three Kingdoms is the masterpiece of Chinese classical literature, and the dialoguedescription in it is wonderful, novel dialogue plays an important role in promoting thedevelopment of the plot, shaping the characters and so on; however, there are few studies ondialogue translation among all the researches.Because of this, this thesis selects dialogue translation in Three Kingdoms as the researchobject, tries to use of relevance theory to guide dialogue translation in novel. And reason outthe original writer’s communicative intention in linguistic context, situational context andcultural context. The translator infers the expectation of target language readers byunderstanding the cognition and culture in target language, and uses different translationmethods to realize optimal relevance between translation and readers.There are four chapters in all in this thesis.Chapter1analyses the characteristics and functions of fictional conversation, it aims toshow that novel dialogue plays an important role in promoting the development of the plotand shaping the characters.Chapter2discusses the importance of context in fictional conversation and its translation.In fictional conversation translation, it also points out that fully consideration of the contextwill help the translator understand and accurately reproduce the implied meaning. Chapter3introduces the basic content of relevance theory, including cognitiveenvironment, ostensive-inferential communication and optimal relevance, and analyzes therelationship between contexts and optimal relevance.Chapter4discusses the usage of relevance theory, and analyzes the Conversationtranslation from three aspects: linguistic context, situational context and cultural context, Inorder to obtain optimal relevance effect in translation.The conclusion summarizes the whole thesis, presents the value and limits in this thesis.