On Explicitation Translation In The Light Of Relevance Theory

As the masterpiece of Hsiao Hung,a celebrated Chinese modern and contemporary female writer,Tales of Hulan River plays a very important role in the history of Chinese modern and contemporary literature.The style and the perspective of the book is unique,but there are few studies on the English version of Tales of Hulan River at present.So this thesis aims to explore the success and defect of the explicitation translation in the English version of Tales of Hulan River from the perspective of Relevance Theory on Translation Studies.According to Relevance Theory on Translation Studies,translation is communication.The complete translation process includes two acts of communication:in the first act of communication,the author of the source text is the communicator.As the audience,the translator must understand the communicative intention of the author of the source text by inference on the basis of ostensive stimulus given by the source text;in the second act of communication,the translator is the communicator,who provides appropriate ostensive stimulus to help the target text readers to get enough contextual effect and optimal relevance,and then understand the communicative intention of the author of the source text by inference with proper processing effort.Based on the classification on encoding meaning of Blakemore,this thesis analyzes the explicitation translation of conceptual meaning and procedural meaning in the English version of Tales of Hulan River,to discuss whether the target text has provided the target text readers the optimal relevance.The study concludes that:firstly,compared with the traditional Code Communication Theory,the Relevance Theory sheds much more light on the explicitation translation,but there are still some limitations.Secondly,in order to make the processing efforts of both the target and source text readers approximately the same,the translator should pay attention to the extent of explicitation.