Study On Metaphor Interpreting From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Modern cognitive linguists hold the view that metaphor is ubiquitous. It plays an important role in human communication. Due to different nationalities and cultural backgrounds, there exists difference in cognition and thinking modes. Thus metaphors which reflect people’s perception also vary in different languages. And metaphor interpreting has become an obstacle for interpreters for giving good performance. This thesis aims to find effective metaphor interpreting methods to help interpreters through study of metaphor interpreting in the premier press conference from2002-2013.Relevance theory is proposed by Sperber and Wilson from the perspective of cognition. According to Relevance theory, metaphor is an ordinary utterance which needs no special interpretive ability and extra processing effort. Besides, as a special kind of cross-culture communication, interpreting is actually a double ostensive-inferential process. Thus, the optimal relevance can offer guidance for metaphor interpreting.This thesis tries to probe into the C-E metaphor interpreting from the perspective of Relevance theory. It firstly states the writing motivations and the significance of the thesis, together with the method of data collection. Then, it gives a brief introduction of metaphors about its definition, classification and previous studies of metaphor interpreting. The following part is an introduction of the relevance theory, and the combination of theory and practice.Based on the definition and classification of metaphors, the author finds out the metaphors used in the press conferences given by former Premier Wen Jiabao during the period of2003-2012, and the interpreting methods of metaphors. According to the reservation of the images of metaphors, the interpreting methods are classified into four groups, namely retaining the image of the Source Language metaphor, converting to Target Language metaphor, retaining the image of the Source Language metaphor with explanation, and converting to non-metaphor. After counting each of the metaphor interpreting methods, the author analyzes the metaphor interpreting from the perspective of relevance theory to figure out the working conditions of each method, helping interpreters to finish their work with high performance. Retaining the image of the Source Language metaphor is the right choice when interpreting cultural universal metaphors. As for cultural specific metaphor, interpreters can choose to convert it to a Target Language metaphor if similar metaphorical meaning can be found in the Target Language metaphor. If the metaphor appears frequently in the source speech and conveys an important message, interpreters can choose to retain the image of the Source Language metaphor with explanation. But due to time limitation, interpreters prefer to convert it to non-metaphor.