The Selective Mechanism As Observed In Two Translation Versions Of Journey To The West

From a cognitive perspective, relevance theory claims that human attention and processing resources go to information that seems relevant. According to Gutt, relevance is context-dependent. Despite the fact that there is a lack of unanimous agreement as to what actually the constituents of context are, it is now commonly known that successful communication can be brought about when the communicators share a specific cognitive enviromnent, which is shaped dynamically with efforts from both the addresser and the addressee. According to Gutt(1991) as well as Wilson&Matsui(1998), the handling of expectation?effort and contextual effect can well affect the degree of ptimal relevance? This paper presumes that there is a Selective Mechanism operating on the mind of the translator, and tries to probe into the process of it functioning on the part of the translator, with optimal relevance as the target and context as basis for comprehension, to see how the Selective Mechanism plays its important role in bringing about the successful context-dependent optimal relevance, its function centering around handling expectation?effort and effect, specifically at the logical?religious and aesthetic levels as observed in the two translation versions of one of the 4 or 5 traditional Chinese classics Journey to the West. With my efforts in this paper, I hope it will be able to help add to the consideration in evaluating the quality of translation works.