On The Translation Of Culture-loaded Words Of Chinese Local-color Literature From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Culture-loaded word is the carrier of a nation’s cultural information. China is avast agricultural country, and it has a very profound rural culture, this cultureoccupies a very important position in the whole Chinese culture. Chinese local-colorliterature has the features of strong rural flavor and distinctive local color and thiskind of literature is a good channel for people in the world to learn Chinese ruralculture. Words in Chinese local-color literature are full of rural flavor and local color.These characteristic words present the world a special Chinese rural society. Theproper translation of these culture-loaded words is very significant for thepresentation of Chinese rural culture.Shengsi Pilao is a representative work of Chinese contemporary local-colorliterature. The writer, Mo Yan, has employed a large number of culture-loaded wordsto reflect the cultural features of Chinese rural society. The translation of these wordsis of great significance to help the target readers to get a good understanding ofChinese rural culture. However, due to the great linguistic and cultural differencesbetween China and the English-speaking countries, it is very difficult to find theequivalent expressions of these words in English and it makes the translation ofthese culture-loaded words become a challenging task. Thus the author of this thesiscollects the culture-loaded words from Shengsi Pilao and their correspondingEnglish versions from Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out translated by ProfessorGoldblatt as the research object to make an analysis of the translation ofculture-loaded words of Chinese local-color literature with the qualitative method from the perspective of Relevance Theory.Relevance Theory assumes that communication is a cognitive activity. In theprocess of this cognition, people aim to obtain largest contextual effect with smallestprocessing effort, thus, optimal relevance can be achieved. In communication,people expect to obtain optimal relevance between utterance and context, and inferthe implicit of the context to achieve the largest contextual effect. Within theframework of Relevance Theory, translation is an inference process which is closelyrelated to human’s cognition. In the process of translation, in accordance with thecomprehension of the source-language writer’s intention, the translator should makethe source-language writer’s intention consistent with the target readers’ expectation,then, optimal relevance can be achieved.Culture-loaded words in Chinese local-color literature are full of strong ruralflavor and distinctive local color. No matter what methods are adopted to translatethese words, the principle of optimal relevance has to be bore in mind of thetranslator. Under this principle, the translator should not only pay attention to thecontent of the original culture-loaded words, but also take the target reader’scognitive context into account.