Translation Of Culture-loaded Words In Life And Death Are Wearing Me Out From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Mo Yan’s winning of the Nobel Prize in 2012 triggers off a new wave of interest in the translation of Chinese literature. Translation is not only about the exchange of language but also the exchange of culture. Because of cultural default, culture translation is one of the difficult parts for literature translation.Relevance theory is an influential cognitive-pragmatic theory, whose influence has been beyond the pragmatic field. It has been used in the translation field. This thesis studies the translation of culture-loaded words in Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out from the perspective of relevance theory. The author collects 245 culture-loaded words in the work and classifies them into four categories—culture-loaded words related to specific historical period, religion, daily life and proper names. Under the guidance of relevance theory, the thesis analyzes and evaluates Goldblatt Howard’s translation strategies of culture-loaded words. Through a statistical analysis, the thesis finds that when translating these culture-loaded words, Goldblatt Howard tends to use indirect translation to achieve optimal relevance, which accounts for 54.29%. This adheres to his translation principle that he tries to make the translated text readable and acceptable. Direct translation is the second translation strategy he tends to adopt, which accounts for 39.18%. Direct translation plus indirect translation is also adopted as a complimentary strategy according to different situations.