Report On English Translation Of Annuals Of The Kingdoms In The East Zhou Dynasty(Excerpts) Under The Guidance Of The Relevance-Adaptation Theory

Based on Sperber and Wilson's Relevance theory and Verschueren's Adaptation theory,scholar Yang Ping and Ran Yongping put forward the Relevance-Adaptation Theory.It is a new integrated pragmatic theory,and also a cross-cultural,translator-centered theoretical model.Under this framework,translation is not only an ostensive-inferential process of seeking relevance,but also a dynamic adaptation process,that is,translator seeks relevance from the cognitive context of source text,and then make dynamic adaptation in the cognitive context of target text.Since the theory has been put forward,it has been widely used in many pragmatics fields,such as humorous language,euphemism,metaphor,discourse marker and translation,etc.This report uses the Relevance-Adaptation Theory as the theoretical framework of the English translation study of the Annuals of the Kingdoms in the East Zhou Dynasty.The translation of words and sentences selected from Chapter 90 to Chapter 94 of the Annuals of the Kingdoms in the East Zhou Dynasty are analyzed.Examples for phonetic loan characters and polysemous words,colloquialisms and set phrases,chapter titles and short dialogues are discussed.There are two research questions: first,how to analyze translation process under the guidance of Relevance-Adaptation Theory;second,what translation strategies,methods and techniques are employed under this theory.Through the combination of theoretical guidance and practical examples,the main findings of this report are that the translation process of the Annuals of the Kingdoms in the East Zhou Dynasty is a process of seeking relevance and making dynamic adaptation.In this process,translators firstly communicate with the original author and the source text in the interpreting process to try to find the optimal relevance according to the context.And then translator adapts to the target language to make the dynamic selection according to the target language readers' cognitive ability and contextual assumptions by using different translation strategies.Translator ensures the optimal relevance under the premise of guaranteeing the cognitive consistency,so as to make sure target languagereaders spend the least cognitive efforts to gain maximum reading experience.In the light of Relevance-Adaptation Theory,the translation of Annuals of the Kingdoms in the East Zhou Dynasty takes faithfulness and smoothness as translation criteria,and uses the translation strategies of domestication and foreignization flexibly.In order to achieve these criteria,the translator has employed the literal translation method and free translation method.Some translation techniques are used,including addition,omission,and division,etc.