On The Rationality Of English Translation Of Fortress Besieged From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

As cross-cultural communication attracts more and more attention and economic development paces up its steps, the study of translation takes its form as an independent discipline. Translation becomes the spotlights of international communication. Correspondingly, people pay more and more attention to the quality of translation. It is known to all that the evaluation of translation could not be independent of translation criticism. To our disappointment, translation criticism still remains a newborn subject. Owing to the insufficient research of this subject, the market is flooded with shoddy translation. It is recommended to reinforce the study of translation criticism, especially those young people who work in the field of translation but have deficient taste in it.However, as a scientific subject, translation should be sustained by some principles and theories, including translation theory, linguistic theory, theory of literature and art, etc. Many translation methods emerged based on the development of translation theory. For instance, Reiss, a germen scholar, established a text type of mode in her work. Grounded on this, she even listed concrete translation principles and criteria of translation criticism. Another example is Newmark, who associated translation criticism with social background and social communicative value. The author of this research sings highly praise of relevance theory put forward by Serber & Wilson.The core of relevance theory lies in that it points out that communication is a process of ostensive-inference in nature and the understanding process is in effect cognitive activity. A successful communication should be based on two premises, that is, A. the mutual ostensive and B. most relevant cognitive mode-relevance.Since the publication of Qian's work Fortress Besieged, it gained great readership and was titled as a great work in the period of 1979-1981 by American Library Association. This translation task involves the exchange of two great cultures. A thorough investigation by the author of this research reveals that free translation, literal translation, domestication and foreignization are the main method adopted here. Based on the relevance theory and translation criticism, this paper is to evaluate the proper adoption of different kinds of translation methods and how the translation meets the requirement of the above mentioned criteria.