A Case Study On Chao Yuen-ren's Translation Of Alice's Adventures In Wonderland From The Perspective Of The Relevance Theory

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is the works of Lewis Carroll,the father of children's literature in England in the 19 th century,and is a classic of children's literature.Since its publication,the novel has been translated into more than 80 languages.The studies on this novel's translation mainly focus on Children—orientation,Skopos Theory,etc,and only few studies are from the Relevance Theory.In the Relevance Theory,translation is an ostensive—inferential communication process among the writer,the translator,and the target reader.As a reader of the original text,the translator should infer the communicative intention of the original author rightly according to the context.As a speaker of the translation,the translator should reduce the readers' processing effort.When the translator realizes the readers' understanding difficulties,he should make ostensive stimulus.Based on the Relevance Theory,this thesis analyzes the ostensive treatment of Chao's translation in language style,culture—loaded words and concrete translation techniques in order to provide a useful reference for children's literature translation.The study makes the following findings.In language style,Chao uses rhyming,reduplicated words,onomatopoetic words and other translation methods.These methods make the translation full of rhythm and rhyme and also are in line with the young readers' reading habits.In culture—loaded words,Chao mainly adopts domestication by using young readers' familiar objects to express the same meaning to save children's processing effort.In concrete translation techniques,Chao uses addition and substitution to make the original meaning clear and the translation easy.These ostensive stimuluses make the translation easy to be understood by the young readers and let them gain the same contextual effect as the original reader.However,as a hearer,there exist misinterpretation,omission and inappropriate wording in some words and sentences because of the translator's wrong inference of the original author's intention.Through the research,it is found that the Relevance Theory plays an important role in translation research,and it puts forward three requirements to the translators: first is to be loyal to the original author's communicative intention;second is to keep the original style as much as possible;third is to evaluate the readers' reading expectation.