An Application Of Relevance Theory In Translation--The Treatment Of Discourse Markers In The Translation Of English Speeches

With the further study of discourse markers, researchers have found that it is only Relevance Theory, put forward by Sperber and Wilson, that can provide an adequate framework for describing the facts about discourse markers. Relevance Theory is based on the perspective of cognition and its basic rule is Optimal Relevance, that is, to fulfil the contextual effects with the least effort. Thus discourse markers, whether they encode conceptual meaning or procedural meaning, are employed by the speaker to minimize the hearer's processing effort for constraining his interpretation to the utterance.Due to the cognitive function of discourse markers we mentioned above, the Chinese translation of discourse markers in English speeches must be carefully treated. Otherwise any malpractice, instead of minimizing the processing effort, maximizes the hearer's cost to interpret the utterance, or even makes the utterance ambiguous to the hearer. Literal translation, deletion, adding and conversion are four frequently used methods in Chinese translation of discourse markers. We should, according to the context in which a discourse marker lies in, adopt one of these methods to pursue the perfect treatment. However, we cannot mechanically follow these static methods in our translation. What we should depend on are contextual effects that discourse markers have created.