A Study On C-E Translation Of Culture-loaded Expressions In Wolf Totem From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Relevance theory, an explanation theory for utterance communication, is proposed by French scholar Dan Sperber and British scholar Deirdre Wilson, and firstly applied in the application of linguistic field. Then their student Ernst August Gutt puts forward relevance theory in translation according to relevance theory. Wolf Totem is the first novel of Jiang Rong. It, set in the background of China’s Cultural Revolution, is a full-length novel which describes a series of stories in Ulan Bator of Inner Mongolia between Beijing educated youths and the wolves. The original novel was published in 2004 in China, and quickly became a hot debate. The English version translated by Howard Goldblatt, American famous sinologist, receives a warm welcome among the English readers and becomes the first ever to be honored with the Man Asian Literary Prize. Through descriptive, literature research, inductive, and comparative methods, this thesis selects culture-loaded expressions in Jiang Rong’s Wolf Totem as the research object and intends to make a comparatively in-depth analysis of the C-E translation of culture-loaded expressions from the perspective of relevance theory in translation. Through this case study, conclusions can be drawn on the following three aspects:Firstly, relevance theory in translation can offer a theoretical framework on the English translation of culture-loaded expressions. Under the guidance of relevance theory in translation, for the translator, the premise to translate culture-loaded expressions is to have an accurate understanding of such expressions in the original context. Meanwhile, the translator should take target language readers’cognition and processing efforts into consideration, so as to make target language readers have a better understanding of the translated version and receive the source culture in the process of looking for the optimal relevance with the least processing efforts in translated version’s context. Secondly, we can get valuable information from Howard Goldblatt’s translation strategies and methods in dealing with the culture-loaded expressions in Wolf Totem, which can offer some enlightenment in translating Chinese works into other languages. Thirdly, under the guidance of relevance theory in translation, this thesis makes a discussion on the inappropriateness of Goldblatt’s translation of culture-loaded expressions in Wolf Totem, which, meanwhile, verifies the significance of relevance theory in translation in guiding the C-E translation of such kinds of expressions.