Applicationof Relevance Theory To The Translation Of Chinese Folk Song Lyric Text

Chinese folk song is an important part of Chinese music culture. There are kinds of richfolk songs in many areas in China, but these folk songs rarely spread overseas. At present,there are having two ways to spread Chinese folk songs all the world. One way is totranslate the Chinese folk song,which is for singing; the other is to translate the lyric text ofChinese folk song,which is not suitable for singing. Translation depends on different countrysocial systems, economy and culture, geographical environment and language features andother aspects. So the paper will apply to analyze, explore and translate the lyric text ofChinese folk song in order to spread Chinese music culture.Sperber&Wilson put forward the Relevance Theory, which is firstly applied to the fieldof translation and developed into Relevance Translation Theory by Gutt. Relevance Theorypoints out that the context plays an important role in understanding of the original; As for thenature of translation, it is interpretative use of language between the source and the target. TheRelevance Translation Theory has strong explanatory power of translating Chinese folk songslyric text. In the light of Relevance Theory, the lyric text of Chinese folk song belongs to akind form of discourse, in which the speaker and the listener communicate by means ofrelevance, and its translation is thought as a double ostensive-inferential process with the aimof seeking for the optimal relevance, which follows the principle with Relevance Theory.Firstly, this paper gives overview of the lyric text of Chinese folk song, and introducesthe main concepts of Relevance Theory and its translation theory such as definition ofrelevance, the contextual effect and the processing effort, relevance principles: cognitiveprinciple, the optimal relevance, ostensive-inferential communication, direct translation andindirect translation, etc. Then the author employs the Relevance Theory to analyze the lyrictext of Chinese folk song and choose some of the lyric texts of Chinese folk songs from thebook, named as “Selected Chinese Songs A Collection of Folk Songs” and the Internet ascorpus examples to analyze and interpret Chinese folk song lyric text, with the aim of tryingto find out effective and specific appropriate methods of translating the lyric text of Chinesefolk song. Through analysis and research, in the terms of Relevance Theory, the lyric text ofChinese folk song translation is considered to be a dual dynamic ostensive-inferential process,which seeks for optimal relevance, based on dynamic context. Under the guidance of relevance translation theory, this paper attempts to find effective and specific translationmethods such as amplification, creating, analogy, annotation, and transliteration, etc. Actually,the author looks forward to providing some references for Chinese folk song translation andhelp the speaking-English foreigners understand our folk songs to spread our Chinese musicculture all over the word.