On The Representation Of Defamiliarization In Literary Translation Under The Principle Of Relevance

Defamiliarization was advanced by Victor Shklovsky (1917), one of the representatives of Russian formalism. As an influential literary theory, it was used to represent Russian formalism poetry in the early20th century and some literary phenomenon in German drama in the1940’s. In the field of literature, defamiliarization, as an artistic expression, means the deliberate use of artistic techniques in the artistic creation of novels, so as to achieve the purpose of prolonging the process of readers’ aesthetic perception as much as possible.Russian Formalist Jacobson claims that it is literariness which makes specific works become literary works that serves as the nature of literature. Therefore, defamiliarized devices are elaborately employed by authors in order to exhibit their works’ literariness. Meanwhile, defamiliarization is also expected to readers, is the driving force to promote the development of literary. Representation of defamiliarization in literary translation is the necessary technique, however, the translator couldn’t ignore the "measurement" in the version, and it seems that the translator is holding a scale and the translator should take a correct attitude towards it. If the "measurement" to grasp well, the representation of defamiliarization can satisfy the target readers’ aesthetic expectation of reading literary works and represent the original charm of language. On the contrary, it can make the translation take time to read and make the original freshness into fatigue.This thesis seeks to exert the principle of relevance to examine the representation of defamiliarization in literary translation. Be engaged in literary translation we should pay attention to two aspects:on the one hand, the translator should find out the optimal relevance to convey the original information accurately so that the target readers can understand the author’s communicational intentions; on the other hand, the translator should dig into the unique artistic form of the original and make the translation retained the original allopatry and strangeness in the maximum limit in order to satisfy the aesthetic expectations and acceptability level of target readers. Therefore, the translator as a negotiator is supposed to optimize the relevance of the original text or author and the target readers.Based on the theory, this thesis chooses the Complete Works of Shakespeare and its Chinese version translated by Liang Shiqiu to analyze the defamiliarization devices and their representation in literary translation. This thesis attempts to illustrate and manifest the aesthetic effect on representing the defamilarization of the original through the concrete example analyze, which is mainly done from two respects:language (phonetic level, lexical level, syntactic level) and culure(image, allusion, appellations, idiom).Enormous research has been carried out on the defamilarization; however, research from the perspective of the principle of relevance to examine the representation of defamiliarization is scarcely seen. It is hoped that the research of phenomenon of defamilarization will arouse much attention of more translation researchers and spur more to explore a better way to represent the defamiliarization in literary translation.