A Report On The Translation Of Culture-Specific Items In Zhang Wei’s Works From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Zhang Wei is a well-established writer from Shandong Province,and many of his works have been translated into foreign languages.Hence,his novel Family(from his long masterpiece You are on the Plateau)is selected as the translation practice material in this report.According to analyses at the lexical,syntactic,textual,and stylistic levels,it is found that the language of the novel is plain in nature,and the major language feature of this novel lies in the extensive utilization of culture-specific items that highlights regional features.This report focuses on the culture-specific items translation in view of Relevance Theory.Relevance Theory was proposed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson(1986),which emphasized that human communicative activity was a cognitive process from ostension to inference.The principle of optimal relevance is proposed to guide communicative behaviors.According to Relevance Theory,case analyses of culture-specific items in the novel are conducted and methods for dealing with culture-specific items translation are summarized.The research shows that Relevance Theory is applicable and scientific in guiding the translation of culture-specific items to some extent.This report consists of six parts: introduction,translation process,theoretical guidance,analyses of the language features of the source text and difficulties in translation,case analyses,and summary.The following conclusions are drawn from the translation practice and summary in this report: At the lexical level,in order to make the translation reproduce the original content more authentically,transliteration plus annotation and omission are used to translate culture-specific expressions.At the syntactic level,idiomatic translation is applied in translating some idioms,and division is used in translating long and complex sentences with culture-specific items to make the translation more fluent and the grammar consistent with English expressions.At the textual level,to make the whole text more logical and cohesive,paraphrase and amplification are employed to translate paragraphs with more culture-specific items that are difficult to understand.At the stylistic level,literal translation and cultural-level shift are used in the translation of some culture-specific items with rhetorical features,and it is hoped that the acceptability of the translation for the readers can be enhanced to some extent.This report presents a detailed analysis and summary of the problems encountered in the translation of culture-specific items,with a view to providing some reference for the translation of Zhang Wei’s novels.In addition,it is also hoped to provide some reference for the translation of Shandong contemporary literature and the dissemination of Shandong culture to the world.