The Translation Practice Of The Modern History Of Dining:The Daily Life Of Man And Food Based On The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

The Modern History of Dining: The Daily Life of Man and Food,written by YUZAWA noriko,discusses the living conditions of workers and the changes of Japanese society on the basis of all food-related perspectives.After translating first and second chapter,the author of this report refinement on the achievements of translating and presented this report based on the academic gains during postgraduate study.The text translated involves many food-related elements,material and social culture in modern Japan.The translator should consider the implied cultural meaning of the source language and think about the cognitive ability of the target language readers.To shorten the cultural distance is a major problem in the translation process.Moreover,the author of the original text quoted literary works and news reports as well as historical material like diaries,account books,investigation reports and etc.,which forms a work in a relatively free style.The whole text is objective in content and meanwhile artistic and lively,which put forward higher requirements for translators.To solve the above problems,the author of this report carried out the translation on the basics of Relevance Translation Theory.Gutt’s Relevance Translation Theory regards translation as an interlingual “ostensive-inferential” communication process,argued that translators should judge the true intention of the original text through cultural factors of the original language.Reasonable assumptions should be made according to the cognitive level of the target readers.After the optimal relevance between the two contexts be found,there will be a suitable translation that can adapt to the cultural connotation of the target language.And in order to solve the problem of how to convey information,Gutt also put forward the concepts of direct and indirect translation which provides translators with ideas on how to choose translation methods.This report is mainly composed of three chapters.The first chapter makes a summary on The Modern History of Dining,analyzes the text on multiple levels and points out the difficulties and problems encountered.The second chapter discusses the Gutt’s Relevance Translation Theory,explores the adaptability of this theory to the translation practice,and puts forward the translation policy followed.The third chapter discusses how Relevance Translation Theory can deal with differences in language,material,and social culture through examples.At the same time,based on Gutt’s concepts of direct and indirect translation,it attempts to summarize specific translation strategies applicable to Japanese-Chinese translation.Finally it talks about the new understanding of relevance translation theory,so as to provide a new direction for translation practice and theoretical research in the future.The conclusions of this report are as follows.Firstly,in the translation of texts with cultural elements,the translator should balance the original author’s intention with the reader’s expectation and find the“optimal relevance”.Secondly,the cognitive order of “ostensive-inferential” process can obviously shorten the cultural distance.Finally,Gutt’s concepts of direct and indirect translation can correspond to the eight specific translation strategies,namely,literal translation,remark,transliteration,retention,replacement,adaptation,addition and reduction,which have been verified in this Japanese-Chinese translation practice.