Inference-based Reproduction Of Defamiliarization

Defamiliarization, a seminal concept of Russian Formalism, was first proposedby Victor Shklovsky in his notable work Art as Technique. Gaining ground at thebeginning of20thcentury, this concept refers to the unconventional expression of thehabitualized phenomenon wrapped in novel forms, hoping to arouse the aestheticdelight among readers. According to Russian Formalism, the essence of literatureresides in its literariness, which makes a certain work a literary one. Writers andtranslators always endeavor to make use of specific features of rhyme and rhythm,words and syntax to break the conventionality of language use in terms of macro andmicro perspective by skillfully “distorting, prolonging, overlapping, and inverting”the system of ordinary language to achieve the literariness of a particular literary work.Therefore, whether the translator is able to effectively reproduce defamiliarizationdevices becomes the priority of translation and the key to the success of the translatedwork.It is worth noting that when highlighting the aesthetic value of a literary work,defamiliarization also intangibly erects a linguistic barrier for readers and translatorsin particular, increasing the difficulty and length of their cognition, and impedingthem from finding the optimal relevance between content and form. Such artisticdevice, as a deviation of conventional way of thinking, conveys implied meaningsbehind forms. Thus, activated cognitive context is in urgent need for translators tomake pragmatic inference and enrichment to figure out underlying meanings.Otherwise, information deviated and distorted from the original will be conveyed.Therefore, the thesis attempts to introduce the inferential mechanism of relevancetheory, providing a necessary guarantee for the comprehension and reproduction ofdefamiliarization, and bestowing the translators with adequate right to makedeliberate decisions in determining the literal meaning and pragmatic meaning of theoriginal, and in choosing the best approach for the reproduction of defamiliarization. The aesthetic value of defamiliarization is embodied by a sense of “distance”between the work and the reader. In this sense, it’s of great prominence to project theaesthetic distance of defamiliarization the same as the original into the target languageduring the process of translation. The thesis, equipped with the approach of“analogical translation” put forward by Zhao Yanchun, endeavors to conduct acomparative analysis of translation of defamiliarization in literary works from threelevels, namely phonetic, lexical and syntactic levels. Analogical translation,characterized as the alternative representation of the source language devices in thetarget language by means of formal and functional likeness, therefore can be regardedas a feasible strategy for transferring the defamiliarized effects and arousing the targetreaders’ expectation for aesthetic experience.In a nutshell, through the analysis of the inference-based reproduction ofdefamiliarization in literary works, the thesis serves as an initial attempt, intending toarouse the interest of scholars in further studies of the cognitive confusion broughtabout by defamiliarization, and in pursuing more appropriate theoretical explanationand reproduction strategies for such artistic devices.