On Cultural Default And Translation Compensation From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory: A Case Study Of The Translation Of Allusions In Fu Sheng Liu Ji

In 1986 the French linguist Dan Sperber and English scholar Deirdre Wilson initially put forward Relevance Theory, which derived from cognitive psychology and was used by cognitive pragmatics to analyze the utterance relevance of verbal communication. In 1991, Sperber and Wilson’s student Ernst August Gutt further developed Relevance Theory and applied it into translation studies. In his monograph Translation and Relevance: Cognition and Context, Gutt considered translation as a communication involving dual processes of ostention-inference. According to Gutt, inference in the communication process is based on relevance, and a successful translation means “optimal relevance” is achieved, i.e. the target language reader could get the most contextual effect with the least processing effort. Besides Gutt, many scholars believe that Relevance Theory is a dynamic translation philosophy with strong explanatory power for translation, in which cultural default is an appropriate research field to support this translation theory.In literary creation process, the authors often employ cultural default to achieve special aesthetic effects. But in translation process, cultural default poses very hard challenges for translators and readers because different geographies, materials, religions and languages together cause the great cultural vacancy between different cultures. Allusions, which are always related to historical events, legends and fables, customs and literary works, is one important aspect of cultural default and translation compensation.Many studies have been made to explore cultural default and translation compensation with the guidance of various theories, among which Relevance Theory is a hot topic. Recently studies on the English translation of Fu Sheng Liu Ji increasingly flourish, yet studies on the allusion translation in this book from the perspective of Relevance Theory need further discussion. So by giving detailed analysis and comments of allusion translation in the two versions of Fu Sheng Liu Ji translated by Lin Yutang and Leonard Pratt and Chiang Su-hui, the author of this thesis explores the phenomenon of cultural default from the perspective of Relevance Theory in this book and hopes to find out appropriate and effective compensation methods in accordance with optimal relevance in translating allusions in Fu Sheng Liu Ji.