Academic Translation From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Academic translation has been playing a significant role in international academic communication between China and abroad.Since the reform and opening up in 1978,China has introduced plenty of western academic works,promoting its domestic humanities and social science.However,owing to translators' lack of relative knowledge and poor quality of translated academic texts,domestic academia cannot fully participate on international arena.Thus,we should devote ourselves to the improvement of academic translating skills and translators' professionalism for higher-quality renditions.That is why this thesis chooses an academic monograph as translation practice and study focus.The text translated is selected from the first chapter of Julian Jaynes's psychological monograph The Origins of Consciousness in Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.Due to its professionalism and logicality,the translator has made great efforts in understanding the original text and in presenting its ideas in translating.In order to reduce the comprehension difficulty on the target readers,and to accurately convey the author's intentions,the translator employs the Relevance Theory to analyze and summarize translation strategies.This thesis summarizes five translation strategies,including "amplification","vague translation" and "free translation in rhetoric" on the contextual level;"free translation in rhetoric" and "literal translation with annotations" on the level of related culture and knowledge.The thesis finds through the five strategies,the translated work can greatly reduce target readers' difficulty in comprehension and strengthen the contextual effects so that the optimal relevance between the original text and readers will be achieved.