A Study On The English Translation Of Reduplicated Terms In Feidu From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Feidu is a long novel written by Jia Pingwa.It attracted broad attention of all circles since its publication in 1993.Moreover,Jia Pingwa won the Prix Femina in France in 1997 with this book.However,its English version—Ruined City:A Novel,translated by Howard Goldblatt,was published until 2016.In this book,Jia Pingwa described the living stories of a group of intellectuals in Xijing city,which reflected the social situation and folk customs at that time.Feidu has not only wonderful plots,but also prominently distinctive language.The depiction of the figures and the exhibition of the folk custom of this book all depend on the use of language.Moreover,one of the most important uses of language is reduplicated terms.Reduplicated terms in Feidu play a significant role in the creation of characters,the description of details,and the expression of the theme.However,there are no equivalent word structures in English for Chinese reduplicated terms because of the differences between Chinese and English.Thus,how to translate Chinese reduplicated terms into English with both conveying the information and retaining the style of the original text is a tough task.Taking the translation methods of reduplicated terms in Feidu as the research object,the thesis firstly studies and concludes the methods of translating Chinese reduplicated terms used by Goldblatt from the perspective of relevance theory.Then,through the principle of equal inferential distance and the translation quality assessment in the perspective of relevance theory,the effects achieved through Goldblatt’s translation methods are discussed and appraised.Finally,a thorough analysis is made to find the reasons why Goldblatt adopts these translation methods based on relevance theory:1)Being aware of his dual identity as an audience and a communicator,Goldblatt adopts different translation methods to convey the information to his readers.2)Taking the inferential ability of the target readers into account and keeping equal inferential distance between the source readers and the target readers,Goldblatt carefully chooses the translation methods and constructs the corresponding contexts according to his own contextual assumptions.3)To achieve the optimal relevance—to make the target readers get enough contextual effects without extra processing effort—is the most important factor influencing Goldblatt’s choice of corresponding translation methods.From above research,such conclusion can be drawn:Goldblatt tries his best to meet the optimal relevance in translating reduplicated terms of Feidu.Furthermore,the relevance theory can guide translators in translating reduplicated terms.It is hoped that this thesis will provide some reference for the study of Goldblatt’s translation and the English translation of Chinese reduplicated terms.