Optimal Relevance In The Translation Of Intangible Cultural Heritage Texts

Intangible cultural heritage(ICH),a prominent component of Chinese fine traditional culture,has a role to play in forging of people-to-people bonds.The protection and inheritance of intangible cultural heritage is of great significance in terms of inheriting diverse traditional culture and enhancing cultural confidence.Besides,translation of intangible cultural heritage texts has aroused scholars’ concern worldwide.However,relevant practices and research on the translation of intangible cultural heritage texts are less than those of other texts in China,so more importance should be attached to the translation of intangible cultural heritage texts in the future.The author selects the Chinese-English practice of the first three chapters of Hand-printing and Dyeing Enriching Life.The source text not only introduces the development of handprinting and dyeing worldwide,but also sheds light on the making process of tie-dyeing and different types of batik works with many illustrations.At first,in terms of lexical level,the expression of the source text is concise,which is easy to understand.There are also some culture-loaded words and terminologies of patterns.Besides,in terms of syntactic level,the source text contains some non-subject sentences,run-on sentences and parallel sentences,and there are some repeated sentences for the making process of tie-dyeing and batik.In terms of textual level,textual coherence is achieved through semantic relations and some cohesive devices hidden in the source text,which needs to be analyzed and understood from the context.Under the guidance of the relevance theory,the author chooses some appropriate translation methods and techniques to address the difficulties at the lexical level,syntactic level and textual level based on cognitive environment and optimal relevance proposed in the relevance theory,so as to attain optimal relevance at different levels.In terms of lexical vacancy,methods such as literal translation,free translation,literal translation with annotation,and transliteration with annotation are adopted to compensate the vacancy of culture-loaded words,and literal translation and free translation are adopted to translate the terminologies of patterns in line with the illustrations of the source text.As for the non-subject sentences at the syntactic level,amplification is used to add relevant subjects,and the active sentences are turned into passive sentences based on shift between subjective and objective perspectives,which aims to make the sentences complete.Furthermore,shift between affirmation and negation,combination,and division are adopted to achieve the clear logic of run-on sentences.At the same time,the author uses omission and amplification to handle parallel sentences.At last,with a view to maintaining textual coherence and semantic cohesion,grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion are used based on the textual differences in cohesion between Chinese and English and features of the source text.In this translation report,the author analyses the translation difficulties and summarizes relevant translation methods and techniques,in the hope of providing references to the translation of intangible cultural heritage texts.