On Pun Translation From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

This paper discusses the translation of puns in Fortress Besieged from the perspective of relevance translation theory.Pun,as a traditional rhetorical device,usually generates two different meanings—a surface meaning and an underlying meaning by utilizing the homophone or the polysemy of a word in a specific context.It has been widely used in many areas including films,TV plays,advertisements,and literary works.Especially in literary works,many writers are keen on using puns.Fortress Besieged is a masterpiece written by Mr.Qian Zhongshu and the use of puns is throughout the entire novel.Qian Zhongshu applies puns into the plots of the novel skillfully with the purpose to give the natural and concise language various connotations.This technique enriches the content of the novel,enhances the vividness of the language,and embodies the artistic charm of the language.Because of the linguistic and cultural distinctions in the East and the West,pun translation is a difficulty in literary translation,and some scholars even thought that pun was untranslatable.Since the 1990 s,more and more translators and scholars have admitted the translatability of pun,and the study of pun has become more and more deep and extensive.In spite of this,the study on puns in Fortress Besieged is rarely involved.Therefore,the analysis and evaluation on translation of puns in Fortress Besieged by using relevance translation theory as theoretical framework is carried out in this thesis.Relevance translation theory provides some theoretical guidance and evaluation basis for the translation of puns.In 1986,Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson proposed the concept of relevance theory in their coauthored book Relevance: Communication and Cognition,which was developed into relevance translation theory by Gutt.Relevance theory essentially relates to cognition,dealing with the relationship between cognition and communication.In Gutt's view,relevance translation theory has a strong explanatory power for translation activities.On this basis,Gutt applied relevance theory to human translation activities,and thus relevance translation theory appeared.Based on relevance translation theory,he proposes that translation is a dual ostensive-inferential process,in which translators have dual identities.In the first process,the translator,as a reader,seeks the best relevance of the original text and makes a correct understanding of the original text.In the second process,the translator,as the communicator,conveys the correct understanding of the original text to the target audience through the optimal relevance.In accordance with this,this paper will try to analyze and evaluate the translation of puns,and discuss the translation methods adopted by the translators with merits and demerits.The research category of this thesis belongs to the C-E translation of Chinese puns.In this thesis,a case study of pun examples is carried out by using the relevance translation theory as the theoretical framework and using the Chinese puns and their translation as the research subjects.Through the C-E translation analysis of puns,the writer finds that relevance translation theory can be used to analyze and evaluate pun translation in Fortress Besieged,and discusses the translation methods adopted by Jeanne Kelly and Nathan K.Mao in Fortress Besieged with merits and demerits.The translator can use the various translation methods to achieve the optimal relevance between the target readers and the original readers in the translation of puns so that the target reader will get the same or similar contextual effect as the original reader.