On Cultural Default And Translation Compensation From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Relevance theory is not originally conceived for translation, but it is its great explanatory power thatattracts many scholars to use it to explain various phenomenons in translation. Obviously, it is aninstructive attempt. The appearance of the theory has provided a new perspective to study the problem ofcultural default. This thesis attempts to explore the phenomenon of cultural default from the perspective ofrelevance theory and hopes to find out appropriate and effective compensation strategies in accordancewith optimal relevance in translating allusions in Tang poems.The thesis just takes the translation of allusions in Tang poems as examples and uses the descriptivemethod to analyze the guidance of relevance theory when cultural default is studied and demonstrate thestrategies the translator could adopt to compensated the defaulted allusions. This thesis is organized asfollows.Chapter One will be a brief introduction of the thesis. In this chapter, the author explains thebackground and significance of the research, especially studies on allusion and allusion translation.Chapter Two is the literature review of relevance theory, cultural default and translationcompensation and allusion translation. In this chapter, an overview of the related studies at home andabroad will be presented.Chapter three is the fundamental theoretical framework. Theories of relevance, cultural default andtranslation compensation appears in this chapter. Relevance theory is the foundation of cognitivepragmatics, it is an interdisciplinary science based on philosophy of language, cognitive psychology,communication studies and the study of human behavior. The theory holds that communication is acognitive process which must be based on the foundation of reasoning thinking. According to relevancetheory, translation is a dual-process ostensive-inferential communication among the original text author,the translator and the target text reader. The best translation is to provide the optimal relevance for thetarget readers or produce adequate contextual effects with less processing efforts. The writer always omitssome shared cultural background knowledge while communicating with his intended readers, which is thenatural result of cognitive communication. It is a peculiar cultural phenomenon called cultural default. Ininter-cultural communication, cultural default may result in misunderstanding because of the differentcognitive environments of the original writer and the target text reader. Therefore, the translator shouldtake necessary compensation strategies to help the target text reader understand the original text correctly.Allusion is the crystallization of human wisdom and the quintessence of language.Chapter Four is a chapter about the strategies to compensate cultural default in allusion translationbased on relevance theory. The translation problems such as mistranslation, overtranslation and undertranslaion caused by cultural default will be analyzed in this chapter. Moreover, somecompensation strategies based on relevance theory will also be offered in this chapter.At last is the conclusion part. Based on the relevance theory, the author of this thesis puts forwardthat when dealing with the problem of cultural default, the translator should adopt appropriatecompensation strategies in accordance with optimal relevance to make the target language reader achievethe most contextual effect with the least processing effort.