A Study On Cultural Default Insnyder's Rendering Of Cold Mountain Poems From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Cold Mountain Poems translated by Gary Snyder,as a successful case of English translation of classical Chinese poetry,and a canon in American literature,popularizes first in America rather than homeland China.Those poems,contributing greatly to American literary,influence profoundly the“beat generation”.This strange but successful example drives scholars to dig out the reasons behind the success.Many scholars also attempt to fathom some available experience from it,which can be used in translating classical Chinese poetry.In view of the cognitive thoughts running through therein,this thesis makes a systematic study on cultural default in Snyder's versions based on the framework of Relevance Theory in order to provide some enlightenment about why the poems were so extolled by target readers.Considering the acceptance of translated text in target culture,the thesis studies from Relevance Theory.By centering on cultural default in Cold Mountain Poems,the study can shed light on cultural factors in translation as more and more scholars believe translation is not only confined to language,but culture.The study develops under the guidance of Relevance Theory from three main clues,i.e.three principles on compensation for cultural default,classification of cultural default and compensation strategies.This study mainly uses the methods of text analysis and case study.The main conclusions drawn from this research were that:(a)the translation of culture has some principles to follow so that translator can know clearly goals of compensation for cultural default.Here three principles concluded by Wang Dalai are analyzed in detail.(b)The discussion of compensation strategies that applies optimal relevance in the translation practice shows Snyder's distinctive way to cope with the translation of cultural default.The results prove that strategies in visual(intersemiotic)translation are complementary to traditionally verbal translation in compensating cultural default.Visual translation is proposed reasonably to be of great use in translating classical Chinese poetry.(c)In addition,compared with the strategy of domestication,foreignization is used more often.There are several ways to realize foreignization,including strangeness of words,and sentence pattern,etc.It is hoped that this analysis is can be useful in the study of Cold Mountain Poems' translation and of classical Chinese poetry.