Translators’ Cognitive Context In Translation-a Relevance Theory Account Of Three Translations Of Forever Amber

Cognitive context, proposed by Sperber and Wilson, refers to asubset of all the facts that the receiver can perceive or infer, based onwhich he or she can infer the communicator’s intended information, boththe communicative one and the informative one.Scholars at home and abroad have done lots of researches onexplicating the cognitive context in translation, but they are mainly aboutthe impact of the TT readers’ cognitive contexts on the translated text.Therefore, this thesis from a new perspective tries to probe into what kindof impacts the three components of the translator’s cognitive context(logical information, encyclopedic information and lexical information)can respectively have on the translated text, so as to arouse the public’sawareness of the significance of the translator’s cognitive contextconstruction.On the basis of Sperber and Wilson’s classification of theinformation that constitutes an individual’s cognitive context, this thesis,against the theoretical framework of relevance theory, undertakes acomparative study on the three Chinese versions of Forever Amber by FuDonghua and the other two modern translators to highlight their differentconstructions of cognitive context. The thesis is expected to shed light onhow and to what extent the three kinds of information composing the translator’s cognitive context affect the translated text and is hoped tocontribute to the translator’s self-awareness of their constructions ofcognitive contexts, which may be employed in the process of translation.