A Comparative Study Of The Stylistic Features Between The Two Translated Versions With View Of Relevance Theory

The Old Man and the Sea, American novelist Ernest Hemingway's representative work, which is concise in its content and fluent in its language has profound cultural connotations. In China a number of translated versions have been published since 1952. The first Chinese version of The Old Man and the Sea is created by Eileen Chang, and it was very popular among the Chinese readers abroad. In the 1980s in China, Wu Lao's translated version of The Old Man and the Sea also aroused many readers'interests. Owning to his retaining of the contents of the original English in his translated version, Wu Lao's work is more authentic and more welcomed by most readers. Since the two versions are of great influence, so it is necessary to do deeper research on them.In recent years in China, the newly translated works of The Old Man and the Sea become more and more, and the research work is on and on. So far, many experts have carried on their research and made great achievements with the view of aesthetic, philosophical, stylistic and psychological perspectives. The dissertation will try to make a comparative study of the two versions translated by Eileen Chang and Wu Lao with the relevance theory. According to the relevance theory, a general translator acts as two roles, one is the communicator and the other is the recipient. It also connects links between the original and the translated. Thus, the translation must also be reasonable in the context of assumptions and constantly adjusted to maximize the correlation exists between the two, and then add translators'own understanding towards the original, let the unique characteristics of the original translator has the largest association of the translation presented to the general reader.The dissertation will base its study on the relevance theory and compare the two translated versions by using examples from the following aspects, such as:diction. In preface, the basic study status quo and meaning of the The Old Man and the Sea are summarized. Chapter One focuses on the presentation of the relevance theory and the theory in translation. Chapter Two presents the literary style and the translators'style on the whole. Chapter Three is the most important part, which uses examples to compare the two translated versions from four aspects of diction, sentence patterns, figures of speech, type of writing and culture differences. Chapter Four compares the two versions from the aspect of its cultural default. Based on the analysis of the above chapters, conclusions can be drawn in the last part.