An Exploration Of Flower Image Translation In Song CI From The Relevance-Theoretic Perspective

The history of Chinese literature lasts as long as over several thousands of years,during which the most splendid literary achievement in Song Dynasty is that of poetry,namely Song Ci.Among all the great number of Song Ci composed by the writers under the new intellectual mentality with its specific and unique characteristics,be it out of sense,moderation,tranquility or peace in mind,the poetry styles range from the bold and unconstrained poems to the delicate and restrained ones.In these Ci poetries,the major group of images constructed are different from those in Tang Poetry like a long river against a setting sun,a horse is running with one brave man shotting bows,etc.,whereas images like“spring,river,flower,moon and night”constitute the major“common images”in Song Ci.Each of these images consisting of many sub-images acts as the delicate tools for the writers to express their direct emotions and mindsets indirectly and profoundly.If we compare one piece of Song Ci to a flower,all those images,both common ones or sub-grouped ones,constructing the whole poem,are like its root,stem,and leaves.It is because of the grouping,juxtaposition,reflection and contrast of those images that Song Ci boasts one kind of special beauty in Yi-jing(意境)different from those sourced from Han Fu(Essays of Han Dynasty),Tang Poems(Poems of Tang Dynasty)and Yuan Qu(Drama of Yuan Dynasty),which explains the reason why the proper translation of Song Ci should begin with the correct and sound transfer of and representation of images.The key focuses of this thesis lie in the basic researches and explorations of flower image translations from the relevance-theoretic perspective with the aim to throw some new lights and insights on the general translation researches. Under relevance-theoretic framework, translation is divided into two processes. One is the ostensive-inferential process to search for the relevance and the other one the process to set up optimal relevance in the target text through dynamic and adjusted manipulation of cognitive context owned by target audiences. As to the translation of flower images in Song Ci,the translator should search for the optimal relevance to pin down the contextual effects of flower images in the source language context. Then, as the bridge for source writer and target reader to successfully, cross-culturally, cross-linguistically communicate and interact, the translator should employ all his cognitive sources actively to set up enoughclues to capture the optimal relevance in target text after he becomes aware of the informative intention and communicative intention of the source writer. It is by this way that some proper translation of flower images in Song Ci could be made to satisfy the cognitive expectation and aesthetic expectation of target readers to understand and appreciate flower images in Song Ci.In this thesis, the translation of flower images in Song Ci is explored from the perspective of relevance-theoretic translation through the comparison, analysis, library research, case studies of different translations by different translators both abroad and in China, the major aim of which is to search for the insight and solution to translate flower images in Song Ci in order to make some initial thinking about how to translate general images in Song Ci. Flower images in Song Ci can be classified into four categories based on the different expression methods of image construction: descriptive flower images, metaphorical flower images, symbolic flower images and allusive flower images. From the perspective of relevance translation theory, different insights and solutions to translate each category of flower images are explored respectively to infer the possible translation processes and reflection paths. It is concluded that the translator should capture the “optimal relevance” to understand flower images in source text before he transfers it to target text via dynamic assumption and manipulation of target reader’s cognitive context to produce sound Song Ci translation.