A Relevance-adaptation Theoretic Approach To The Translation Of Chinese Folk Customs-related Vocabulary

CFC-vocabulary is an important carrier of Chinese nation’s folk customs culture.Thereby, a penetrating study on the CFC-vocabulary translation is particularlynecessary for the transmission of such kind of culture to the foreign lands. In spite ofits tremendous significance, previous researches on this topic are far from adequate,which are mainly concentrated on the folklores carried by the CFC-vocabulary andCFC-vocabulary translation studies merely occupy a marginal position in overalltranslation studies. In order to fill this gap, the present research is aimed at taking arelevance-adaptation theoretic approach to the CFC-vocabulary translation. Aqualitative approach will be taken in our theoretical analysis of the data selected fromthe realistic CFC-vocabulary.Relevance Theory, as was initiated by Sperber&Wilson in1986, views verbalcommunication as an ostensive-inferential process involving the communicator’sostension of his informative and communicative intentions and the addressee’sinference of such intentions. An assumption is relevant iff it can achieve somecontextual effect in its specific context. In this way, relevance is a matter of degree,depending on contextual effect and processing effort. The interaction between thesetwo variables gives rise to different degrees of relevance such as “maximallyrelevant,”“incompletely relevant,”“irrelevant.” Human cognition and communicationare respectively guided by cognitive and communicative principles of relevance. Theinference viewed from the perspective of Relevance Theory is context-based, optimalrelevance-oriented and a rational response to the communicator’s ostensive stimulus.Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory holds that language use is a dynamicadaptation process through linguistic and strategic choices, which have the propertiesof variability, negotiability and adaptability. Adaptation Theory centers around fourangles of investigation, namely, contextual correlates, structural objects of adaptability,dynamics of adaptability, and salience of the adaptation processes. Having absorbed the advantages of both the Relevance Theory and AdaptationTheory, Chinese scholar Yang Ping (2001) has proposed an integrated model, which iscalled Relevance-Adaptation Theoretic Model. This model claims that the languageselection and utilization is a process in which the speaker first makes a presumption ofrelevance and then makes optimally relevant linguistic and strategic choices inadaptation to the physical, social and mental contexts. Adaptation-relevance model iscomprehensive in that it shows concern for both the language production andinterpretation processes, and both the relevance-oriented and adaptation-orientedresearches.Through a detailed analysis of considerable number of CFC-vocabulary data, theresearch has arrived at the following findings:First, CFC-vocabulary translating process is an ostensive-inferential process, anoptimal relevance-seeking process, and a process of adaptation to both linguisticcontext and non-linguistic contexts composed of physical, psychological-cognitive,and socio-cultural contexts.Second, translators have relatively high degree of salience or meta-pragmaticawareness in their adaptation process involved in CFC-vocabulary translation, forthey should consciously self-monitor their linguistic and strategic choices so as tomake their translation version faithful to the semantic content and linguistic andcultural flavors of the source expression and at the same time adapt to the linguisticand extra-linguistic contexts of the target expression users.Third, the five participants involved in CFC-vocabulary translation process (i.e.source expression, original CFC-vocabulary users, translators, target expressions andtarget readers) form a complicated network of relevance relationships, in which thetranslator, as both CFC-vocabulary interpreter and target expression producer, plays acrucial bridging role in the chain of communication. Relevance of the sourceexpression is guaranteed by its users and obtained by its translator’s inference; thetransference of relevance from the source expression to the target expression dependson its translator’s ostension; and at last, target readers can achieve the relevancecarried by the target expression through their own inference. Last, the adaptation process in CFC-vocabulary translation is dynamic ratherthan static. The dynamics of adaptation in the translating process can be revealed bythe variability of linguistic choices at phonetic, morphological, semantic, syntacticand pragmatic levels of language structure and the negotiability of the strategicchoices among transliteration, literal translation, liberal translation, annotation,substitution, omission, translation with cultural images, etc.This thesis is concluded by sketching out a blueprint for the relevance-adaptationprocesses involved in CFC-vocabulary translation: the translator first infers theinformative and communicative intentions conveyed by the source expression andthen calculates the target readers’ cognitive environment; thereafter the translatormakes negotiable linguistic and strategic choices from variable possibilities to adaptto the cognitive context of the target readers while trying to faithfully convey thesemantic content as well as the linguistic and cultural flavors of the source expression.