A Report On The E-C Translation Of The Worlds Of The Indian Ocean (Excerpt) From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

With the development of the Belt and Road Initiative(BRI),the India Ocean region(IOR)bears increasing strategic significance as a channel for the maritime Silk Road in twenty-first Century.The Worlds of the Indian Ocean shifted from the traditional European-centered narrative of history to that of countries in the IOR.It is expected to enhance the academic understanding of the history,trade,economy,religion and politics of island countries in the region,and provide intellectual support for the construction of a Community with a Shared Future for Humanity in the region.As a result,the second volume of the book is selected as the source text(ST),focusing on the rise and development of the Silk Road in Tang Dynasty and the southwest Indian Ocean island countries,the Comoros and Madagascar.Based on the cognitive and communicative principles of the Relevance Theory,this report explores the way of flexibly adopting translation strategies and methods to achieve “optimal relevance” between ST author’s intentions and the cognitive environment and expectations of target readers.Besides,the translator also explores the applicability and explanatory capability of the Relevance Theory in translation from lexical,syntactical and textual levels.At the lexical level,the translator deals with interdisciplinary terms,historical events and characters from the ST with the techniques such as addition and annotation to help target readers establish contextual relevance and cognitive assumptions;At the syntactical level,the translator takes the differences in linguistic structure and mindset into account and adopts translation strategies such as domestication and foreignization to contrive “optimal relevance” of the ST and target text(TT);At the textual level,the translator focuses on the text structure and its consistency and coherence to improve the readability and contextual effect of the translation.In addition,this task report discusses the implications of the Relevance Theory on quality assessment(QA)and decision-making.The value and defects of the theoretical framework in approaching translation phenomena is to be discussed.This practice report consists of five chapters.Chapter One concerns the task description,which covers the background,objectives and significance of the translation task;Chapter Two deals with the process description: pre-translation preparation,while-translation and posttranslation proofreading and revision;Chapter three introduces the overall framework of relevance theory and the basic concepts of optimal relevance from the perspectives of communicative principle and cognitive principle,and discusses the applicability and explanatory power of the theory;Chapter four discusses,based on case analysis,the influence of characteristics of the ST and the challenges encountered on the translator’s decision-making process;Chapter Five,the conclusion,in which reflections,limitations and suggestions based on the translation task are to be shared.