A Report On The E-C Translation Of A Northern Light (Excerpts) From The Perspective Of Relevance Translation Theory

This report is on the English-Chinese translation of A Northern Light written by American novelist Jennifer Donnelly from the perspective of Relevance Translation Theory proposed by Ernst-August Gutt.A Northern Light is an inspirational story about how the main character Mattie achieved her dream through her effort and revealed an infamous murder bravely.It is very popular among teenagers and there is no Chinese version,so it is worth translating into Chinese.The Relevance Translation Theory is adopted during the translation.Gutt put forward this theory based on the Relevance Theory proposed by Sperber and Wilson.It analyses what is communicated and how to communicate in communication from the perspective of cognition.It regards translation as an ostensive-inferential process and argues that the aim of the communication is to find the optimal relevance to achieve communicator's intention.In addition,Gutt proposed the notion of direct and indirect translation based on the Relevance Translation Theory.Direct translation provides an approach to the translation of style.Under the guidance of Relevance Translation Theory,the author of this report applies direct translation strategy to reproduce the communicative clues of the original text from the perspective of semantic,syntactic,phonetic and rhetorical aspects,and tries to retain the style of the original text to a certain extent.However,due to the differences between English and Chinese,it is impossible to use direct translation all the time,which may affect the readability of target language.Therefore,indirect translation is applied to achieve the optimal relevance.This report consists of two parts.The first part includes source text and translated text,while the second part is divided into four sections,which are description of the translation project,including the significance and analysis of the translation task;translation processes,including preparations,translation theory and strategies and revision;case studies based on direct translation and indirect translation;and conclusion of the translator based on the experience of the translation task.