A Report On Chinese-english Translation Of Colorful Mountain Flowers (Excerpts Of Chapter 5-7) From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

The Chinese-English translation of literary works,as the carriers of culture,plays an essential role in spreading Chinese culture.Plentiful Chinese literary works have been translated into English,but few books systematically introducing the culture of Chinese ethnic groups have been translated.Thus,Colorful Mountain Flowers,which describes the customs,beliefs,costumes,specialties and history of the ethnic groups in Yunnan,is worthy of being translated into English.The translator selected chapter 5-7 of the book as her translation task in the hope of providing a chance for Western readers to know a wider knowledge of the culture of Chinese ethnic groups.This translation task takes the relevance theory proposed by Sperber and Wilson as theoretical fundamental.The theory mainly illustrating verbal communication from the perspective of cognitive linguistics was applied to translation studies by Gutt.According to Gutt,translation can be considered as an act of communication or an inferential process closely related to mind faculty of the translator.The translation report contains five parts.The first part gives an introduction to the translation task,consisting of its backgrounds,values and objectives and organization of the report.The second part elaborates the translation process involving pre-translation,in-translation and post-translation.The third part introduces the relevance theory,the cases and the relevance of the theory in the translation.The fourth part discusses the case studies at lexical level,syntactic level and cultural level.Some specific examples are given to illustrate how the translator adopts various translation methods to cope with the difficulties met in translation under the guidance of the relevance theory.The last part summarizes experiences from the translation,limitations of the translation and suggestions for further improvement.