要把Vinay and Darbelnet’s model加进去
Good afternoon everyone. Today my presentation topic is the translation of metaphor from the perspective of relevance theory, my case is two English versions of drama Teahouse.
Tea house is a three-act play written by Lao She. He is good at depicting the life of common people, which easily finds echo among them, and also at vivid portrayal of characters. His language, often the oral Chinese spoken in Beijing area, is humorous and ironic.
Teahouse reflects fifty years from the end of the 19th century to mid-20th century in China, and it reflects the reality of both social and political. In the past, a teahouse meant more for Beijingers because for them it was a place of social gathering, which was frequented…show more content… As defined by Newmark in A Textbook of Translation, metaphor is a visual representation, a natural shift of meaning, using word or words collocation to present the literal sense which cannot be referred to the occasion. All polysyllabic words and majority of verb phrases are potential metaphors, and all the extended meanings are metaphors. In the drama Teahouse, there are a great number of them. In communication between people of different culture and different languages, translating metaphor between languages has several…show more content… The idiom is familiar to the Chinese, but the meaning is unclear to readers in other countries. Therefore, it is necessary for the translator to act as a bridge role. According to Howard's literal translation, readers cannot directly get the context because they don't understand the meaning of this idiom. But in Ying Ruocheng’s translation, he ignores the story and explain the meaning to the audience, resulting that the relevance between readers and authors is formed, which lead to good communication.
Implication
From the analysis of the text, we can see that, in the translation of metaphor, most of both translations can convey the cultural connotation in the proper way. English translation of metaphor must take into account the different cultural backgrounds of the Chinese and English languages and different associations of metaphorical images, the translation is not a simple word docking. As an English native speaker, Howard was more familiar with the context of culture than Ying Ruocheng, and did a better job of making the relevance.
Due to the specific format and historical background, the translation of drama should give the audience best relevance and connections between two language context, that make the audience easily understand the plots and history of this period. From this perspective, it requires higher standard