A Probe Into The Translation Strategies Of Cultural Default From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

In recent years, with the efforts of scholars in our country, the research on Relevance theory has become matured, and Relevance theory has been increasingly tied with translation practice. However, there are still controversies on whether Relevance theory can be used to explain cultural default, though the culture default has been a big hit among the researches on Relevance theory. Under the framework of Relevance theory, this thesis aims to increase the argument on culture translation by explaining cultural default in the book of A Tale Of Two Cities. And taking two versions of the translation for example, one is translated by Sun Fali, and the other is translated by Zhang Ling and Zhang Yang. From the three perspectives of person names, place names, measuring unit and culture-loaded words which are divided into ten categories by the causes of cultural default, including anecdotes, life experiences, geographical location and social customs, this thesis adopts the method of contrastive analysis to analyze the differences on translating strategies between the two versions. The thesis finds out that Relevance theory could be used to explain cultural default, and it also provides a powerful argument for the rational existence of Relevance theory. By analyzing two translation versions, there comes to the conclusion:many translating strategies are adopted to resolve the cultural default, such as literal translation plus footnotes, free translation, free translation plus footnotes and explanation in the text and so on. Each translator may choose different strategies as they like. The version translated by Zhang Ling and Zhang Yang tends to keep the original cultural information, so they adopt the strategy of foreignization, and the most commonly used strategy in this book is literal translation. This strategy can not only keep the original cultural information but also convey the communicative intention of the original text clearly. But too many footnotes may interrupt the reading process, or even make the text less coherent, then the reader will become less interested in reading it; by contrast, Sun Fali tends to adopt the strategy of domestication, so as to make the translation close to the target readers at the maximum level. In this way, the images of the original text are always be omitted, and the original cultural information is lost, the culture cannot be exchanged successfully, though the target readers can obtain the communicative intention of the original easier and by minimal effort. As time goes by, with the deepening of the cultural exchanges between China and western countries, the culture defaults in present time may not exist in the future. So the cultural default is relative rather than absolute, and the range of which will be gradually narrowed. That is one of the reasons why the masterpieces need to be retranslated. Only in this way, the translation caused by cultural default can be more accurate. This thesis plays a certain role in promoting the development of Relevance theory and guiding the cultural translation, and it may help reduce disputes.