An Appreciation of The outlaws of the Marsh English Translation from the Perspective of Relevance Theory

Abstract

This paper takes the relevance theory as the research perspective, selects the 1957 English translation of Shapiro 's The Outlaws of the Marsh as the core object, conducts a specific analysis using the explicit reasoning model, sorts out the relevant strategies of cognitive context reconstruction by comparing the original text and the translation, and focuses on how translators handle semantic fidelity and communicative validity in cross-cultural communication. A closer look reveals that Shapiro's translation is highly in line with the cognitive environment of the target readers. It not only retains the narrative features of the original work but also does a good job in the metonymy and reconstruction of cultural images. This provides a very valuable case for the cognitive pragmatics study of the translation of Chinese classical literature into foreign languages.

This paper takes the relevance theory as the basic perspective of research, selects the English translation of The Outlaws of the Marsh published by Shapiro in 1957 as the core research text, conducts a comparative analysis of the original text and the translation, sorts out various specific strategies of the translator to complete the reconstruction of cognitive context, and also focuses on analyzing the translator in the practice of cross-cultural communication. How can a balance be achieved between semantic fidelity and communicative effectiveness? After research, it can be concluded that in the process of translation, Shapiro fully considered the cognitive environment characteristics of the target readers. He not only completely retained the original narrative features of the original work but also made proper metonymy and reconstruction of the cultural images in the text. Such translation practice has also provided support for the cognitive pragmatics research in the direction of translating Chinese classical literature into foreign languages. It left behind typical cases of reference value.