（外国语言学及应用语言学专业论文）关联理论映照下的文学翻译探析——《红楼梦》两个英译本对比研究.pdf

iv 摘摘 要要 法国语言学家 dan sperber 和英国语言学家 deirdre wilson 于 1986 年在他们 合著的关联性：交际与认知中首次系统地提出关联理论，这一认知语用学理 论。近年来，随着语言学和翻译研究的发展，关联理论被越来越多的译者所接受 和认可。这篇论文旨在通过对前人研究的梳理和对红楼梦两个英译本的分析 进一步发现关联理论的对文学翻译的解释力及其对翻译研究的意义。 关联理论提出了明示推理的语言交际观，强调了语言交际中的认知过程。 ernest august gutt 在他的关联：认知与语境一书中把这一理论系统地引入到 翻译领域，提出翻译是一个动态的明示推理过程。他把翻译过程认定为一种大 脑机制，把最佳关联认为是不同翻译方法的评判标准。 这篇论文通过对 红楼梦 两个英译本的对比分析， 对关联理论进行了分析。 在翻译的过程中，关联性决定着译者对原文的理解程度，也决定着读者通过目的 语对原文的理解程度。本文作者运用推理和归纳的方法对两个译作进行剖析，并 最终得出结论：虽然在翻译理论研究中对关联理论的认识和理解存在着分歧，但 关联理论对文学翻译的适用性还是非常广泛的，而且可以有效地指导翻译实践。 关键词：关键词：关联理论；关联；交际目的；翻译 ii abstract relevance theory is a pragmatic theory. nowadays, with the advances of linguistics and translation studies, it has been applied to the field of translation and has found its growing acceptance among translators. the purpose of this thesis is to find out the explanatory power of relevance-theoretic account in literary translation through summarizing former researches and analyzing the two translated versions of the chinese masterpiece hong lou meng and to have a new perspective on researches and studies of literary translation. in 1986, sperber and wilson put forward, in their joint work relevance: communication and cognition, a pragmatic theory, relevance theory, regarding verbal communication as an ostensive-inferential process, and focusing on cognition in communication. and later, relevance theory was brought into translation studies, by wilsons student, ernest august gutt, in his relevance: cognition and context, in which gutt maintains that translation can be defined as a dynamic process, an act of ostensive-inferential verbal (intralingual or interlingual) interpretation. relevance theory, therefore, differs greatly from other translation theories on account of the fact translation process is considered to be the metal mechanism, and optimal relevance is thought of as a standard of translated versions to various literature works. this thesis makes a tentative study by carrying out a comparative analysis on some excerpts of the two english versions of hong lou meng. during the process of decoding and encoding in communication, relevance theory determines the extent to which the translator understands the source text and to which the reader understands iii the source text via the translated version. in this thesis, the author elaborates the function of relevance theory applied in translation with quotations in hong lou meng in deductive and inductive approaches. the conclusion is finally drawn that relevance theory is applicable to translation and can effectively guide translation practice, though there still exist some divergences in the research of translation theories. key words: relevance theory, relevance, communicative intention, translation i acknowledgements my greatest and warmest gratitude would go to my tutor, associate professor hao jun, who has devoted her precious time to reading through each draft and making critical comments and insightful suggestions. without her inspiration and encouragement, this thesis would not have been completed so smoothly. i would like to thank her especially for her patience and for providing me with penetrating and inspiring remarks for improvements on the present thesis. in addition, i would like to express my sincere thanks to all my teachers in the two and a half years of my postgraduate studies, who have given me enlightening opinions and inspiring advice in the whole process. i am also thankful to my fellow student ms. liu jia for her intensive proofreading of my thesis and constructive suggestions to improve it. 1 chapter 1 introduction translation has been studied for centuries. early in the 3rd century b.c, the scholars began to translate the old testament of the bible into latin in alexander city of ancient egypt. from then on, a great number of translators came to accumulate the translating experience and means of translation studies, gradually transferred their opinions on translation, which at last was developed into a complete system of translation theories. 1.1 the purpose of the study relevance theory comes from the west and many chinese scholars have studied it for years. translation is now being studied from many different aspects, in which relevance theory is of utmost importance and great influence. relevance theory, originally, is a linguistic theory and is brought into translation studies by ernst-august gutt, which sheds light on a wide range of translation phenomena and practice. this thesis tries to compare the two translated english versions of hong lou meng, which is an influential chinese literary work. the author tries to analyze these two versions with relevance theory a theory which has been attached great importance in translation studies and made great contributions already. in addition, this thesis aims at finding out the differences between the two translated english versions. by doing so, more useful and practical approaches to translation studies and translation practice are expected to be analyzed and found out to direct our future 2 thoughts of translation, and hopefully new light could be thrown upon nature of translation. 1.2 the significance of the study this study in the thesis is theoretically significant in which it is a test of relevance theory which arose great reflection when it was first introduced into china. many scholars introduce it actively. this thesis gives a research on relevance theory by comparing the two translated english versions of hong lou meng. there is no denying the fact that cross-cultural communication should be developed in both directions. western people in growing numbers tend to know more about chinese culture. thus, translators adopt the way they like to translate cultural materials. according to this, it is clear that relevance theory provides some guidance for translators in china. 1.3 the methodology of this study hong lou meng is one of the best-known masterpieces in the world and has had more than ten translated versions in english. this thesis means to take two of them, translated by yang hsien-yi and gladys yang and david hawkes, and conduct a comparative study by using relevance theory. the two english versions are compared from the perspectives of linguistic level, cultural level and translating methods. 3 1.4 the layout of the thesis this thesis includes five parts with chapter 1 as a brief introduction of the purpose, the significance, the methodology and the layout of the thesis. chapter 2 is literature review which consists of four parts. the author gives a general review of relevance theory with cognitive environments and mutual manifestness, the ostensive-inferential communication, contextual assumptions and relevance and principle of relevance. part two introduces study abroad and at home. the third part is about translation as an inter-lingual communicative activity including the notion of translation and translation as an inter-lingual communicative activity. the last part introduces gutts relevance translation theory. chapter 3 is a comparative study of the two english versions of hong lou meng. it has two parts including the introduction to hong lou meng and its two translated english versions and the comparative analysis from the perspective of relevance theory. the two versions are compared from the linguistic level and the cultural level. chapter 4 is the explanatory power of relevance-theoretic account. this chapter consists of five parts: efficacy and faithfulness in translation, translatability, retranslation, default in translation, translating principles and relevance, further elaborating and summarizing the application of relevance theory in translation studies and practice. based on the analysis in chapter 3 and 4, chapter 5 is a conclusion. the author points out the major findings and limitation of this study and puts forward a tentative 4 proposal for the future efforts. 5 chapter 2 literature review 2.1 a general review of relevance theory in the process of language learning, the speakers would try to encode their intention into their words. meanwhile, the listeners get their intention by decoding the verbal signals. while the actual communication course is by no means so common just like this. 2.1.1 cognitive environments and mutual manifestness a cognitive environment of an individual is “a set of facts that are manifested to him” (sperber an assumption is relevant to 8 process it in this context is small” (speaber every act of ostensive communication communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance” (sperber second, the psychological complexity of the utterance itself. greater complexity implies greater processing effort; gratuitous complexity detracts from relevance” (wilson, 1999, pp. 45-46). so far as translation is concerned, the process of the translators interpreting the source text or the target text readers is one of interactions between the relevant contextual presumption and the input information. 2.2 historical background of relevance theoretic translation studies in the 1980s, relevance theory appeared and has a strong influence on some disciplines, especially translation. after that, many scholars began to apply the theory 10 to translation studies, and made previous achievements. 2.2.1 study abroad hatim and mason are the first to apply pragmatics in translation studies. they claim that “it is the translators task to assess relevance to intended audience and that the translators decision on which portions of the source text are to be omitted is related to what is judged to be relevance” (zeng, wenxiong, 2007, pp. 95-96). after that, hatim and mason claim that “a translator should not only have a bilingual ability but also a bicultural vision and should act as a mediator between the source text producers and the target text receivers”(zeng, wenxiong, 2007, pp. 223-224). besides hatim and mason, olsen, tirkkonnen-condit, unger, and kovack all try to apply relevance theory in translation. but they do not make very deep researches. gutt takes the lead to apply relevance theory to translation studies. he thinks that “the principle of relevance heavily constrains the translation with regard to both what it is intended to convey and how it is expressed” (gutt, 2004, p. 107). he means that the translation should be the same as the original in this aspect which gives enough contextual efforts to the audience. gutt also proposes a principle which the translator should obey while translating, because of the differences in different languages, cultures of the source language and the target language readers. gutt also states that “translation happen in secondary communication situation, thus very often in translation there is a difference, not only of language, but also of context” (gutt, 2001, p. 77). 2.2.2 study at home 11 in china, lin kenan first introduced relevance theory to translation studies. then many chinese translators began to do the research of relevance theory in translation studies. he ziran claims that pragmatic translation is set up based on relevance theory. the activity of translation consists of the original author, the translator and the target language reader. he also points out that the translators first task is about his right assessment of the target language readers cognitive environment and of the cultural differences between the source language and target language. the aim is to find optimal relevance to transfer the intended meaning to the target language reader by using different translation strategies. after that, zhaoyanchun analyzed the relevance theory and translation. he thinks that “translation is an act of ostensive-inferential intralingual or interlingual interpretation of a source text” (zhao,yanchun, 1999, p. 280). and he also claims that “relevance theory provides translation with a unified theoretic framework, which serves as the basis for the tatters onto logical and methodological considerations”(zhao,yanchun, 1999, p. 293). there are also many translators doing the research on relevance theory. zhao xinhong, zeng wenxiong, wang bin, wang jianguo and luo xuanmin all have done this research. meng jiangang also points out that “neither foreignization nor domestication should be adhered to rigidly and that the practice of either should depend mainly on the communicative intentions of the source language author and the translator”(meng, jiangang, 2002, p. 27). he also proposes to put the principle of domestication and foreignization together in the relevance theory. 12 2.3 translation as an inter-lingual communicative activity 2.3.1 the notion of translation in the book, the theory and practice of translation, nida offers a definition of translation. he thinks that “translation consists in reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source-language message, first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style” (nida, 1982, p. 12). after that, mona baker also defined translation and he thinks that the translator was treated as a decoder and re-encoder of message, who sought to relay them intact after making adjustment for informativity depending on the relative (un)predictability of items in the source and target language. a translation should make the target language receptors understand the content as clearly as the source language receptors and appreciate the impact of the original work. the scholars have been studying “translation” for a long time. in 1954, mao dun, at the national conference of literary translators, claimed that “literary translation is to reproduce the original artistic images in another language so that the reader of the translation may be inspired, moved and aesthetically entertained in the same way as one reads the original”(fang, mengzhi，2002, p.1). translation is an artistic reality of the original in the perspective of artistic translation. some scholars also define translation in the perspective of linguistic aspect. catford points out “the central problem of translation practice is that of finding target language translation equivalents. a central task of translation theory is that of defining the nature and conditions of translation equivalence” (catford, 1965, p. 21). translation includes the 13 reproduction in the receptor language of the source language and the receptors may understand how the original receptors of the source language understand the original text. the relation between the translation and the original is interpretive resemblance which appears as a scalar notion. gutt says that “there appears to be very little reason to expect that one day a reasonably well-defined and generally accepted notion of translation will emerge”(gutt, 2000, p. 48). the best original translation should be “in which the aim in the tl is equivalence as regards the conceptual context, linguistic form and communicative function of a sl text” (nord, 2001, p. 9). 2.3.2 translation as an inter-lingual communicative activity in translation, almost every element of communication can be found. when the translator deal with relevance theory, he or she can put translation into specified domain. communication needs message source. in translation, there are two message sources. one is source language author and the other is translator. the source language author is the original source sender who creates the source and translator is the message receiver. in translation, the source language author encodes his own experience, and feeling in the original text. the translator refers to the same source and it depends on the translators knowledge and perception. the receiver, as mentioned above, is the translator. another group of receivers is the target language readers. these two groups of receivers have their own intention to the source language. the receivers response to the source language is quite active. as he tries to translate, through the source language and the text, he would communicate with the source text author. the channel, encoding and feedback are also the elements of communication. 14 “translation (including interpreting) is to be a type of transfer where communicative verbal and non-verbal signs are transferred from one language into another” (nord, 2001, p. 11). the activity of translation lasts for a long time and translators pay much attention to equivalence. this refers to the different cultures. “the concept of culture as a totality of knowledge, proficiency and perception is fundamental in our approach to translation. if language is an integral part of culture, the translator needs not only proficiency in two languages; he must also be at home in two cultures. in other words, he must be bilingual and bicultural.” (snell-horby, 1996, p. 42) 2.4 gutts relevance translation theory gutt tried to apply relevance theory in translation for the first time. he thinks that “it could be said that many views expressed on translation in the past centuries amount to a mass of uncoordinated statements” (gutt, 1991, p. 2). there are different ideas about the definition of translation. gutt explains that “in view of the complexity of decision-making in translation one would expect the science of translation to have launched on intensive discussion of the nature of the decision-making processes in translation, but no such discussion of any degree worth mentioning has taken place.” (gutt, 1991, p. 8) he also thinks that “in relevance theory context does not refer to some part of the external environment of the communication partners, be it the text preceding or 15 following an utterance, situational circumstances, cultural factors, etc.;