| Relevance theory, the foundation and core of cognitive pragmatics, aims to explain verbal communication from multi-disciplinary angles. Gaining its theoretical support from linguistic philosophy, cognitive psychology and communication studies, it proposes that verbal communication is an ostensive-inferential manifest process in which comprehending utterances is a cognitive activity. As translation is an interlingual cross-cultural communication, relevance theory, not meant for translation, though, is powerful in accounting for translation.Introduction of relevance theory into translation was first made by Gutt who treats translation as an act of dynamic ostensive-inferential communication rather than a static text genre. Since then, the relevance-theoretic approach to translation has gained more and more attention from scholars and the progress of the research has been made both at home and abroad. According to relevant studies, the most important significance of the combination of relevance theory and translation lies in the fact that the study of translation process is thus explicitly emphasized, and the vitality of relevance theory lies in that it can explain the set of intricate and confusing paradoxes arising in translation practice:translation is a means of communication in which the accurate comprehension of the source text and the adequate representation of the original intentions are both achieved in conformity with relevance. Under the guidance of the principle of relevance, the endless debate on the various translation principles and strategies can be kept off; the development of relevance-theoretic approach to translation provides a new angle for translation studies.William Shakespeare is one of the most remarkable playwrights and poets the world has ever known and his works are frequently translated and retranslated in China, among which Hamlet is the most popular one. In the past150years, China has made great progress in the field of Shakespearean translation studies, but few of those studies is conducted from the perspective of relevance theory. On this basis, the thesis argues that within the framework of relevance theory, an analysis of the cognitive environment of the characters in Hamlet and that of the audience or readers of the play, and the survey of the relevance of utterances will contribute to a better understanding of Shakespeare’s language as well as revealing the psychology of those characters, and then the artistic charm of the play and its language can be better rendered and delivered.Therefore, taking relevance theory as the theoretic framework and the translation of Hamlet as an object of research, the thesis discusses the accurate comprehension and adequate representation in the Chinese renditions by Liang Shiqiu, Zhu Shenghao, Fang Ping and Bian Zhilin, and points out that:due to the disparity of cognitive environments, the loss of relevance caused by separation of informative and communicative intentions, the reduction or invalidation of contextual assumptions, the loss or distortion of contextual implications will lead to the failure of translation; in order to restore relevance and bridge the gap of different cognitive environments, the translator is supposed to match informative and communicative intentions, supply the contextual assumptions needed and manifest contextual implications so that accurate comprehension and adequate representation could be achieved and the communication of translation facilitated. The author hopes that this attempt may bring some vigor to the translation studies theoretically and practically and stimulate further research. |
