A Study On The Translation Of Food Culture-specific Items In Dent-Young’s The Marshes Of Mount Liang From The Perspective Of Relevance Translation Theory

Chinese food culture is well-established,broad and profound,and enjoys a very high reputation in the world.The proper translation of Chinese cuisine can help the world to understand the Chinese food culture better.Shuihuzhuan is one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature.The story,which is set in the Song dynasty,is the portrait of the society.In the novel,the description of the dietary life vividly and intuitively reflects part of Chinese food culture.For overseas readers,the food culture in Shuihuzhuan is one of the important ways for them to understand the ancient Chinese food culture.Ernst-August Gutt,an English linguist,introduced Relevance Theory into translation studies and put forward Relevance Translation Theory.Gutt believes that translation should also include the ostensive-inferential communicative process.Gutt’s opinion refreshes people’s understanding of translation.He provides new perspectives for the construction of translation theory and the explanation of translation phenomenon.Spanish scholar Aixela systematically discussed the translation of culture-specific items.His definition and translation strategies of culture-specific items are widely accepted.Aixela believes that in translation a culture-specific item does not exist of itself,but as the result of a conflict arising from any linguistically represented reference in a source text.Admittedly,Shuihuzhuan contains a large number of culture-specific items,including food culture,religious culture,military culture and other cultures.As for the research of the English versions of Shuihuzhuan,there are few studies on the translation of food culture.The thesis chooses The Marshes of Mount Liang,the 120-chapter English version of Shuihuzhuan,as the object of the study.Guided by Relevance Translation Theory,the study is presented to analyze translation strategies of food culture-specific items in The Marshes of Mount Liang.The thesis hopes to provide some references for Chinese-English translation of food culture-specific items and makes efforts to the spread of Chinese culture.In the analysis of the food culture-specific items translation strategies in The Marshes of Mount Liang,the thesis finds that for the translators,no matter what kind of translation strategy they choose,the translation of the food culture-specific item always includes the inferential-ostensive process.John and Alex Dent-Young make use of translation strategies like linguistic(non-cultural)translation,intertextual gloss,synonymy,limited universalization,absolute universalization,naturalization and deletion,based on their understanding of food cultural connotation in Shuihuzhuan.They help the target-language readers to get adequate contextual effects with spending necessary processing effort.John and Alex Dent-Young provide some references for the food culture translation in other classical novels of Chinese literature.