A Study On The Translation Variation Of The Family From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Relevance theory was first put forward by French scholar Sperber and British scholarWilson in1986, aiming to explain various matters in verbal communication. It regards verbalcommunication as an ostensive-inferential process and suggests that the core of communicationis to find optimal relevance between the communicator and the audience and to infer theintention of communicator. Ernst August Gutt applied this theory to translation studies. In hisopinion, the process of translation is an inferential process consisting of two rounds and threeparties—the author, translator and readers. Under the framework of relevance theory, thepurpose of translation is to achieve optimal relevance and to make the intention of the originalauthor and the expectation of the audience meet. Chinese scholar Huang Zhonglian proposedTheory of Translation Variation by conducting a systematic study on translation variationphenomena and considered that the significance of translation variation studies is to absorb moremessages from overseas purposefully at a faster speed and in a larger amount. What these twotheories have in common is their view of translation as a communication act and their emphasison the audience and on the aim of effectively conveying information. Because of its greatexplanatory power and its sharing final goal with translation variation study, relevance theorycan efficiently explain the phenomenon of translation variation. Thus, translation variation canbe fully illustrated from the perspective of relevance theory.This thesis regards relevance theory as its theoretic framework and alteration translation asits research object, intending to broaden the visual threshold of literary translation study throughthe combination of the two. With the case study of the translation variation of The Family, thethesis aims to explore its process of alteration translation, especially the translation process inorder to see how the translator makes the intention of the communicator and the expectation ofaudience meet.The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter1introduces The Family and its two versions.Then, it gives a brief introduction to translation variation theory, process of translation variationand alteration translation. Chapter2makes a review of the development of relevance theory andprevious study on The Family as well as Ying Ruocheng’s translation studies. Chapter3ismainly concerned with relevance theory and the relationship between relevance theory andtranslation variation and concludes that relevance theory can give a theoretic direction fortranslation variation. Chapter4attempts to explore the process of alteration translation with thecase study of The Family from the perspective of relevance theory, which is conducted from theaspects of content, form and style. Through analysis on the three aspects, it is believed that thetranslator successfully grasps the intention of the author and takes into account the audiences’ cognitive environment, making his translation optimally relevant to the audiences. Chapter5concludes the whole thesis with a summary of the major findings, limitations and suggestions forfurther study.