On Translation Strategies Of Prose From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Translation practice,as a kind of communicative behavior,not only deals with the conversion of two languages,but also promotes the exchanges between two cultures.In recent years,in order to respond to the call of increasing self-confidence in culture,Chinese cultural translation has become a focus of translators.Pottery Beauty: Pottery in Old Times is a book of prose works,in which the author Yan Hulin truthfully illustrated the charm of traditional Chinese pottery culture,vividly expressed people's affection for pottery,and clearly revealed the history of pottery and pottery culture.Therefore,the thesis takes Chapter 15 and Chapter 16 of the book as the practical translation material to explore and discuss English translation strategies of prose under the guidance of Relevance Theory.Relevance Theory,firstly put forward by Sperber and Wilson in 1986,is a pragmatic theory which explains human communication and cognition.In 1990,Gutt combined this theory with translation studies and proposed the concept of Relevance Translation Theory in his doctoral dissertation.This theory offers a scientific and systematic theoretical framework for translation practice.In this theory,translation is viewed as a special kind of communication with a dual ostensive-inferential process.The pursuit of optimal relevance in the cognitive environments of source text authors and translators,translators and target text receivers is the criterion for a successful translation.Currently,researchers have combined Relevance Theory with many kinds of texts.But,prose has seldom been involved.Therefore,this thesis offers a detailed analysis on the translation strategies of prose from the perspective of dual ostensive-inferential process and optimal relevance of Relevance Theory with the aim that the research can make contributions to the transmission of the pottery culture and expand application scopes of Relevance Theory.This thesis consists of six chapters.Chapter One briefly introduces the whole thesis,including the research background,the research purposes,the research methodology as well as the thesis structure.Chapter Two comprehensively reviews the studies on Relevance Theory and prose translation at home and abroad.ChapterThree is the theoretical framework of the thesis,which gives a complete interpretation to the development,connotation and propositions of Relevance Theory.Chapter Four focuses on text analysis,including the types and features of prose as well as the language features of the book Pottery Beauty: Pottery in Old Times.At the same time,translation principles of prose are discussed in this chapter.Chapter Five,the core part of the thesis,deeply explores seven strategies that were adopted in the translation of Pottery Beauty: Pottery in Old Times under the guidance of Relevance Theory,including literal translation,literal translation with annotation,translation plus annotation,substitution,compensation,amplification and omission.Chapter Six draws a conclusion,which not only summarizes the major findings and limitations of this thesis,but also gives some suggestions for further studies.