Treatment of Cultural Default in Literary Translation from the Relevance-Theoretic Perspective

摘要

The present paper intends to argue that treatment of cultural default in literary translation can be accounted for within the relevance theory. An account of relevance theory is presented. Detailed analysis of some representative examples of transla-tion within the relevance-theoretic framework is made. The notions in Relevance Theory can effectively account for the opera-tion of different translation methods and techniques when tackling the cultural default. The purpose of using various translation skills is to obtain the optimal relevance between cognitive context in target readers'minds and communication intention of the original author.