A Comparative Study On The Enigmatic Language In The Two Translation Versions Of Hongloumeng From The Perspective Of Relevance Translation Theory

The Relevance Theory is first proposed by Sperber and Wilson in their masterpiece Relevance:Communication and Cognition. Their student Ernest August Gutt took this research into the field of translation and published Translation and Relevance:Cognition and Context five years later, separating the study of translation from the endless debate of the rigid translation theory. Gutt is the first one to apply the relevance theory into the translation research. As far as he is concerned, translation, being a verbal communicative behavior, is a brain mechanism involved ostensive-inferential process. It is not only related to the language code, but what is more important is that it links to the dynamic inference according to the changing contexts, which depends on the relevance. Furthermore, relevance is the basis of the choice of the code made by people in the process of the understanding and translation of the source language. Tranlation activity is a verbal communicative behavior. It is an interlanguage ostensive-inferential activity. Most translating activities can be disassembled into different scopes of communicative interpretative application. Target language readers build their understanding of the translation work on the basis of their cognitive knowledge. The emergency of this theory acurrately states the point of view, and provides the clear guidance to the practitioner.From the angle of the language artistic appreciation, an excellent literature works always has multilayel meanings. Beneath the plain surface meaning which is easy to understand and master, there is a layer of deep connotation which can not be unfolded without deliberate research. This is the enigmatic language. Enigmatic method is a kind of special way of speech or writing skill. The enigmatic language is relative to the common language, which contains the generally accepted literal meaning and lexical meaning. The phenomenon of adopting enigmatic language is on of the reflections of the vivid relationship between language and society. The enigmatic language is the speciallized choice of words by a certain social group and organization in the purpose of identifying and avoiding the outsiders to achieve a particular social communicative function. This functional variant is adopted according to different social performance which can lively reflect the close relationship between language and society.In this thesis, the translation of the enigmatic language in the two different versions is compared in the framework of the relevance translation theory. Through the research of the categories of the enigmatic language, some characteristics of both the two versions can be found:the Yangs abide by the source language style to the greatest extent, and be faithful to the original text. The hidden meaning of the enigmatic language is expressed in the way of remarks. While Hawkes develops his imagination and creation in translating, at the same time combining his own knowledge system and fully considers the cognitive competence and standard of the target language readers. No matter which strategy is adopted, both of them try hard to meet the goal of optimal relevance by applying as little effort as possible to achieve a nearly perfect translation effect.