On Science Fiction Translation From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

After the release of Santi and Hei An Sen Lin,Santi III: Si Shen Yong Sheng is another masterpiece authored by Liu Cixin who is an excellent science fiction writer of our era.Translated by Ken Liu and published by the Tor and Head of Zeus,Death’s End is highly sought after by millions of fans.So far,Death’s End has won 2017 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel and been nominated for 2017 Hugo Award,which successfully promotes Chinese science fiction to world-class level.This thesis makes a relatively detailed study on Death’s End based on relevance theory presented by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson.Relevance theory proposes that communication is an ostensive-inferential process,adequate contextual effects is gained without spending gratuitous processing efforts,and achieving optimal relevance is the purpose of the communicators.Since translation is a kind of special communication,the translator should attempt to achieve optimal relevance during translation,which means optimal relevance represents the translation standard.Thus,successful translation lies in whether the translator achieves optimal relevance or not.Through an analysis of Death’s End,the author of this thesis makes a summary of different kinds of translation methods and techniques adopted by Ken Liu to achieve optimal relevance,and divides them into general ones and the special ones.The former includes 7 translation methods and techniques,such as transliteration,addition,omission,shift and so on,while the latter,6 in total,refers to adding of translator’s notes,rearrangement of paraphrases’ order,splitting of paragraphs,use of small font and so on.Thus,the success of Death’s End lies in the application of appropriate translation methods and techniques,so as to achieve optimal relevance between the original author and the target reader.