A Study Of Chinese-english Translation Strategies Of Metaphor From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Big Breasts and Wide Hips,one of the representative works written by Mo Yan who has won Nobel Prize,is an epic masterpiece.This book is a successful case that Mo Yan has tried in the writing style of epic and folk stories,in which numerous metaphors are involved that have added a variety of language features.In 1986,Sperber put forward relevance theory together with Wilson in a book called Relevance: Communication and Cognition.RT believes that communication is an ostensive-inferential cognitive process,in which successful processing by the listener is the core of communication in RT.Certainly,relevance depends on two elements respectively: cognitive context and processing efforts of the listener.To be more specific,the less processing efforts the listener has paid,the better contextual effects and stronger relevance the communication will gain;on the contrary,the more processing efforts the listener has paid,the worse contextual effects and weaker relevance the communication will gain.From the beginning of the 1970 s,the study of metaphor had been turned into cognitive linguistics from the point of rhetoric.Metaphor is not only a kind of linguistic phenomenon but also a fundamental way for mankind to perceive the world.Relevance theory can be used to provide some guidance for metaphor and in this process,optimal relevance can be observed because it is the core of communication.As for metaphor translation,the translator should understand the implied meaning of metaphor from original work and then accurately identify cognitive ability and environment of target readers,later convey communicative intentions to them,under this circumstance and choose appropriate translation strategies to express the connotation of original metaphors.This thesis will classify metaphors,conduct some studies on the English version of Big Breasts and Wide Hips and meanwhile aims at exploring Chinese-English translation strategies from the point of relevance theory,based on which this thesis will analyze the English version written by Howard Goldblatt and various translation strategies adopted by translator according to different types of metaphor.These studies indicate that the translator takes into full consideration cognitive ability and environment of target readerswhile translating Big Breasts and Wide Hips,so that target readers can obtain maximum contextual effects through less cognitive efforts.At the same time,this thesis aims at analyzing the decisive element of relevance theory---optimal relevance,representing completely translation strategies under the guidance of relevance theory,realizing optimal relevance between translation and target readers,making sure that target readers can produce the same expectations as original ones,therefore,optimal relevance can be achieved so that the communicative activity---translation will be the successful one.This thesis can provide certain reference to select and adopt metaphor translation strategies under the guidance of relevance theory.