A Case Study Of The Translation Of Context Under The Guidance Of Relevance Theory

This report,under the guidance of relevance theory,mainly analyzes the difficulties in translating contexts in political text,and manages to figure out possible strategies to provide a reference for context translation.The study is based on the translation of the sixth chapter of One Road,Many Dreams written by Professor Daniel Drache,A.T.Kingsmith and Professor Duan Qi.The source text contains a stretch of political and economical notions and concepts,in which contexts play a vital role in understanding the idea.Dealing with the language context appropriately is a major task during translation.Relevance Theory holds the view that translation involves two times of ostensive-inferential communication.The optimal relevance,which is the essence of the theory,can be achieved when the intention of the speaker corresponds with the expectation of the listener.The translator is supposed to make contextual assumptions based on communicative clues and choose the illustration of highest relevance in order to provide proper contextual effect.This report discusses the way to deal with the context in terms of the translation of vocabulary,metaphor and cohesion of sentence pattern.Conclusions can be drawn as follows.Firstly,literal translation is adopted to translate proper nouns and expressions.Secondly,contextual effect needs to be strengthened in translating high-context words and abstract nouns based on the author’s cognitive intention.Thirdly,contextual effect is generally weakened when translating metaphors to save readers’ efforts in making inferences.Lastly,the translator needs to figure out sentence structures and the logic embedded,and strengthen contextual effect to achieve better validity and reliability.