On Science And Technology Translation From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Relevance theory regards the ostensive process and inferential process as two aspects of a communication process. For the speaker, the communication is an ostensive process;for the listener, communication is an inferential process. Translation is also an ostensive-inferential process. Being a kind of translation, sci-tech English translation is also an ostensive-inferential process. In the excerpts of smart materials, the information expressed by the “speaker”, namely the original author, is the scientific knowledge and research achievements, while the “listener”, namely the translator, needs to infer the author's real intention according to the ostensive information to seek for the optimal relevance and to provide some reference for the scholar, experts and readers. Based on the relevance theory proposed by Sperber and Wilson, this translation report aims at guiding the Chinese translation of the excerpts in the Smart Materials.In the excerpts of Smart Materials, sci-tech information, lexical information and logical information are the three factors that restrict the author's inference. For the sci-tech information, the author mainly adopts the strategy of referring to the related literature review, and consulting the professional personnel in this field to ensure the accuracy of information. For the lexical information, the author mainly dealt with the terminologies and non-technical words: for the terminologies, the author adopted the methods of borrowing from some literatures or looking up the dictionaries directly; for the non-technical words, the author translated them according to the context and word-formation. For the logical information, the author mainly analyzed the sentences,including the compound sentences and passive sentences. Amplification or adjusting the word order or splitting the long sentences into shot sentences are the ways that the author used to find out the logical relationship in the sentence structure. In translating the passive sentences, the author changed it into active voice or passive voice according to differentcases, aiming to seek for the optimal relevance with the original text. Thus the readers can be clear and quickly find out the sentence information.