On The Translation Of Culture-Loaded Words In Yang Xianyi’s English Version Of Dawn Blossoms Plucked At Dusk From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk is a collection of essays by Lu Xun,a very distinguished Chinese writer. It narrates his past experiences as a child and then as a young man. The narration displays the local customs,traditions and social features of that time. There are abundant culture-loaded words in this collection of essays, and it is a work with rich cultural flavors. By referring to Nida’s classification of cultural factors, the present thesis classifies the culture-loaded words contained in the work into five categories: ecological culture-loaded words, material culture-loaded words, social culture-loaded words, religious culture-loaded words and linguistic culture-loaded words. It is really a great challenge and painstaking task for the translator to give smooth and accurate translations of the culture-loaded words and to introduce our Chinese culture eloquently and effectively to foreign readers.This thesis takes Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang’s English version of Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk as the study object, analyzing their translation of the culture-loaded words in the work from the perspective of relevance theory to show how they faithfully conveyed the author’s intention and make their translation achieve the optimal relevance.Relevance theory is a very important part of the theories in cognitivepragmatics. It is mainly about verbal communication and cognition, and its key notion is “relevance”. This theory tries to discern the internal mechanism of human beings so as to explain the way human beings communicate with each other. Translation is a cross-linguistic and cross-cultural communicative activity, and it surely observes the general principles of communication. Therefore, relevance theory can provide a guiding theoretical framework to translation studies and a strong explanatory power to translation practice.Through case studies, the thesis analyzes the translation methods that the Yangs adopted to render the culture-loaded words in Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk. It also tries to explore how these methods contribute to the realization of the optimal relevance in the Yangs’ translation. Firstly, this thesis refers to Venuti’s analysis of cultural translation and divides the translation strategies used in the Yangs’ English version into two categories: domestication and foreignization.Then, by analyzing specific examples, it explores how the Yangs adopted appropriate translation methods like literal translation, free translation,substitution and transliteration to convey the author’s intention as well as the cultural connotations of the culture-loaded words to the TL readers with the result of broadening their cognitive environment. From this analysis, it comes to this conclusion: Generally speaking, the Yangs’ translation of the culture-loaded words in Dawn Blossoms Plucked atDusk has very well reflected the principle of “optimal relevance”. They fully understood the cultural connotations contained in such words and accurately grasped the original author’s intention. On this premise, they took into full consideration the target language readers’ cognitive environment and receptivity and then employed appropriate translation strategies and corresponding translation methods. And they succeeded in reducing the processing efforts of TL readers and conveying both the original author’s intention and the brilliant Chinese culture to the foreign readers smoothly.