On Drama Translation From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Relevance theory proposed by Sperber and Wilson is a communicative theory,and according to relevance theory, speech communication is an ostensive-inferentialprocess. Gutt is the first to apply relevance theory to translation studies. He holdsthat translation is in nature a kind of speech communication, which provides a freshperspective in translation studies. Scholars from abroad and home all undertakeresearch of the relevance-theoretic translation approach to testify the strongexplanatory power of relevance theory on translation.Drama translation is an important part of literary translation, but it attracts lessattention than the studies of novel and poetry translation. As an important means ofinter-cultural exchange, drama translation becomes more and more necessary.However, due to the complexities of the drama script and the fact that the ultimateaim of the translation is to perform, for a long time, the study on translation of dramalacks of systematic theoretical direction. Focus of the drama translation studies onlyconcentrates on the characteristics of drama language or applying certain linguistictheory to analyze the drama language.Almost all the studies on drama translations take appreciating the aestheticvalue of the translation as an aim, while there are no mistake-spotting and diagnosticdrama translation criticisms. Drama translation studies, especially for stage-orienteddrama translations, proposing practical drama translation strategies from theperspective of relevance theory, are few and far between. To solve this problem, thisthesis probes into the application of relevance theory into the drama translation,taking the two English versions of Teahouse as an object of research, abandoning thepast only singing praises for the drama translation, making a mistake-spotting criticanalysis of the two versions by pointing out the mistranslation, and at last, proposingthe strategy to restore the relevance for stage-oriented drama translation. Byapplying relevance theory into drama translation, this thesis attempts to make somecontributions to this less explored area. At the beginning, this thesis introduces the research background and problemsto solve and emphasizes the theoretical and applied significance of the present study.As the theoretical basis of the whole thesis, chapter one makes a review of the basicconcepts and core contents of relevance theory and Gutt‘s relevance-theoreticaltranslation approach. Chapter two firstly reviews on drama and the dual nature ofdrama and then discusses the principle for stage-oriented drama translation. Chapterthree, the core of the thesis, analyzes the reason for the mistranslations of the twoversions with detailed illustrations by examples and raises corresponding strategies.At last, the author makes a summary of the main research results that relevancetheory has a great explanatory power on drama translation and the restoration ofrelevance is the basic strategy in drama translation. At the meantime, theshortcomings of the present study are pointed out and the author believes that dramatranslation studies from the perspective of relevance are worth more extensiveresearch and explorations.