A Relevance Theoretical Account Of Translation Of Culture-loaded Words

Culture-loaded words, as the carrier of culture, reflect vividly the uniquenessof national culture on the one hand, and pose great difficulty on translation andcultural exchange on the other hand, whose translation has direct influence on th equality of translated version and the success of culture exchange. Therefore, asystematic research to the culture-loaded words and their translation is verynecessary and important.Relevance Theory, with its immense explanatory power, provides theontological and methodological accounts for translation. From the perspective o frelevance theory, translation can be seen as a dual ostensive-inferential processinvolving three parts which are the source text author, the translator and the targettext readers. To achieve the optimal relevance between the source text author andthe target text readers is the ultima te goal of translation.Besides The Peony Pavilion, Handan Ji is another masterpiece of TangXianzu who is famous for his Four Dreams written in Linchuan. The dramaexposes the darkness of feudal rule deeply through a golden millet dream of theprotagonist Lu Sheng, and is called an exposure of the official world at the end ofthe Ming Dynasty. The English version of Handan Ji by Wang Rongpei isincluded in the Library of Chinese Classics and has made outstanding contributionto the dissemination of Chinese traditional culture.This thesis intends to study the translation of Chinese culture-loaded words inthe relevance theoretical account based on the case stu dy of The Handan Dream.The author classifies the culture-loaded words in The Handan Dream according toNida s five types of sub-culture, and then probes two approaches in the translationof Chinese culture-loaded from the perspective of relevance theory directtranslation and indirect translation, among which direct translation includestransliteration and literal translation while indirect translation includes liberaltranslation, substitution and omission. Throu gh the exemplification and detailedanalysis to each method, the author concludes that when translating theculture-loaded words, the translator should take the optimal relevance as th ejudging criterion and adopt different methods according to the similarities anddifferences of cognitive environments of SL readers and TL readers in order to getthe optimal relevance and make successful communication. The thesis hopes to promote the research of Handan Ji, the translation ofculture-loaded words and Chinese classics to some extent, and make a contributionto the dissemination of Chinese traditional culture.