A Study Of Satire Translation In "Gulliver’s Travels" From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Satire is a kind of literary writing techniques.It can enrich the charm of literary works,improve their artistic value,and also embody the talent and wisdom of the author.For the reader,satire also added a lot of charm during reading,so as to attract more readers.Thus,in the translation circles,satire translation of literary works is very important and difficult for translator.If the satire meaning of the original text is not well and properly expressed to the target reader,this kind of translation is unsuccessful.Besides,compared to the original text,this version,without the satire effects,will become pale and weak,and tasteless for reading.Therefore,it is essential for the translator to correctly and properly translate the satire in literary works.In 1986,French scholar Sperber and British scholar Wilson put forward the Relevance Theory,and their student Gutt associated it with the practice of translation and put forward the Relevance Translation Theory(here after RTT).The RTT regards translation as an intentional human communication activity,and it is particularly appropriate to use some of the concepts and perspectives to explain and guide satire translation.This paper chooses Gulliver’s Travels as a research case,on one hand,this work is the masterpiece of the author Swift who is a master in the application of satire;on the other hand,it is widespread across the world and there are many translated versions in China,but the translator’s handling of the core meaning of satire texts is not the same,which is worthy for further study.Such research could make some inspiration for the satire translation research in the future.According to the grammatical hierarchy of modern linguistics,this paper summarizes and analyzes the satirical translation of Gulliver’s Travels from the aspects of phoneme,morpheme,word,phrase and sentence layers.By comparing the three Chinese versions in parallel way,the author used the RTT to analyze and evaluate the translator’s approach in translating,and also pointed out the advantages and disadvantages of different translation methods.Through the analysis of theoretical research and case study,this paper argues that in translating satirical literature works,the translator needs to compare the differences of the cognitive environment between the original readers and the target readers.Guiding by the RTT,the translator should use different translation ways to deal with satire texts.For example,direct translation could retain the original intention of the communication to a large extent,so that the target reader can get the same contextual effect after making certain processing efforts.While,if the cognitive environments of the original reader and the target reader are very different,it will be hard for the target reader to understanding the satire effect,therefore he or she can not make reasonable inference.Under such circumstance,indirect translation method is more suitable.This paper summarizes and classifies the materials of satire texts,which include English version and three Chinese versions,from the aspects of phoneme,morpheme,word,phrase and sentence layers according to the grammatical hierarchy of modern linguistics.The satirical texts tend to use unconventional language means,which,on the one hand,illustrates that the RTT is suitable for the translation of satirical texts,on the other hand,it also provides communicative clues to text translation.Of course,the RTT can not solve all the problems in translation,but it plays an important role in the translation of satire text.It is reasonable and correct that using the RTT to guide the satire translation,which could retain the original satire effect to the greatest extent,so as to achieve the purpose of optimal relevance.