On Translation Of EAT, PRAY, LOVE From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

EAT, PRAY, LOVE: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India andIndonesia, the English original book is one of the best-sellers in America in recent years.It tells a soul trip of a30years old woman to find herself and realize herself, whichplays a role in improving the self-discovery and self-awareness of females. Right now,the book 《一辈子做女孩》 translated by Translator He Peihua from Taiwan, which ispublished by Shaanxi Normal University Press, is the only published simplified Chineseversion in China.Up till now, all the few reviews focus on its promotive function to self-awarenessof females and the appreciation of the movie with the same name adapted from thebook. There is no research on the English version and Chinese translation in the light oftranslation at home. In consideration of these reasons, this thesis attempts to analyze therelevance of the source text and translation by applying relevance theory to the research,and tries to evaluate the translation quality of the Chinese translation.This thesis analyzes the relevance of the source text and translation from threeaspects: cognitive context, cultural context and style. On the basis of analysis, thesecould be found: as to the cognitive context, the translator takes the differences of thetwo languages from logic and grammar and some other things into account in a fairishway; as to the cultural context, with sufficiently valuing the diversities of the twocultures, the translator selects the culture images which the target language readers arefamiliar with, and adopts some strategies like using notes, to promote the success of thecommunication; as to the style, the translator also reproduces the original features of theEnglish version, such as layout, mood and so on. Overall, the Chinese translation relatesto the English version rather well, and the inference room to the Chinese readers given by the translation approximates the inference room to the English readers given by thesource text. At the same time, this thesis evaluates the translation quality fromtranslation reliability, validity and optimal relevance. Through the translation qualityevaluation of Chinese translation, it is discovered that this Chinese translation couldreproduce the informative intention and communicative intention of the writer in arelatively good way. It realizes the translation validity and tries to ensure the translationreliability, and allows the target readers to get the optimal contextual effect with theminimum effort by some means of logic, syntax, semantics and notes and so on and soforth, achieving the optimal relevance of the two texts. It is a translation with relativelygood translation quality. Of course, there is still some room to improve in thistranslation.Because there is no research about the Chinese translation and English versionright now, let alone the comparative analysis of the two versions, the comparativeanalysis on translation which applies relevance theory to it, is promotive in developingresearches on the book. It also can estimate the translation quality in an even betterfashion, which will be helpful and instructional in translation. Meanwhile, it can beaware that whether the translation conveys the English culture, thoughts, self-awarenessof females and some other information behind the words properly. And it is useful to thecommunications between the two different cultures, which will improve thecross-cultural activities.