| This thesis tries to probe into the explicit and implicit representation of Chinese cultural elements in Fortress Besieged,the English version of Wei Cheng,from the perspective of optimal relevance principle.Sperber and Wilson proposed relevance theory in 1986.They studied this theory from two aspects: contextual effect and processing effort.Relevance theory focuses on both the process and the nature of human verbal communication.What’s more,it emphasizes that human communication is characterized by the search for optimal relevance,that is,to achieve contextual effect without pulling gratuitous processing effort.The major findings of this thesis are the followings.First,optimal relevance principle plays a very important role in the study of the explicit and implicit representation of Chinese cultural elements in Fortress Besieged.Second,this thesis has explored five translation strategies of the explicit and implicit representation of Chinese cultural elements in Fortress Besieged,they are the methods of amplification,omission,substitution,annotation and transplantation.With these translation strategies,the translator can preserve the communicative intention of the original author to a large extent.Third,this thesis has concluded three significant determinants that can decide the explicit or the implicit representation of Chinese cultural elements in literary works,namely,the original author’s communicative intention,the expectation of the target readers and the cognitive environment.Last but not least,the author probes into three necessary factors for the spread of Chinese cultural elements,which are excellent literary works,outstanding translators and the TL readers’ expectation.The impediment of the spread of Chinese cultural elements is caused by the different cognitive environment.At the end of the thesis,the author points out the limitations of the thesis and gives suggestions for further study. |
