A Report On E-C Translation From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory—A Case Study Of The Future We Choose:Surviving The Climate Crisis(Selected Chapters)

This is a practice report.The reporter chooses Chapters 4 to 8 of The Future We Choose:Surviving the Climate Crisis as the translation material.This book is co-authored and published by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac,leaders of the 2015 Paris Climate Change Conference.The translation practice is guided by the Relevance Theory(RT).According to the linguistic features of the source text(ST)and under the guidance of RT,the reporter analyzes in detail the adoption of different translation methods in terms of lexical,syntactical and discoursal levels through specific translation examples.At the lexical level,the difficulty lies mainly in the translation of personal pronouns and proper nouns.Due to the differences in the use of personal pronouns between Chinese and English,the translator adopts the techniques of omission and explicitation.As to proper nouns,since the target text(TT)readers tend to have less understanding about the proper nouns and their implicit information,the methods adopted include amplification and annotation.At the syntactical level,as to some affirmative or negative sentences that cannot show the real tone of the original text when translated literally,the translator adopts negation;and for some long and difficult sentences that seem cumbersome and bulky when translated directly,the translator uses cutting;and as for those sentences whose information are already explained in the source text but are not obvious when translated directly into Chinese,the author adopts amplification.At the discoursal level,the translator changes the cohesive devices in the translated text,including the use of personal reference,clausal substitution and zero anaphora,to make sure no extra efforts are expended;and in terms of coherence,for the information that is not included in the cognitive context of the target text readers,the translator adds the information into the target text to enrich the readers’ cognitive context.Through the analysis of the text at the lexical,syntactical and discoursal levels under the guidance of the RT,the reporter finds that the RT has a strong explanatory power for translation,and the readers’ cognitive context plays an important role in the whole translation process.Through this translation practice,the reporter has gained a deeper understanding of the difficulties of translation and a deeper perception of translation as a whole.It hopes that this report can provide some reference for the research of the Relevance Theory in the application of translation.