关联理论与广告翻译

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Relevance Theory and the Translating of Advertisement

摘要

关联理论认为，当新信息在某个特定的语境中，结合语境假设能产生语境效

果时，这一信息对该语境就具有关联性。语境是指人们为处理信息而从其认知环

境中抽调出来的一个假设子集。抽调语境假设需花费处理努力，不同场合调用同

一假设所需的处理努力不同。关联性是个相对概念，其强弱取决于两个因素：语

境效果与处理努力。同等条件下，语境效果越大，关联性越强; 处理努力越小，

关联性越强。在人类交际活动中，交际双方会潜意识地寻求最佳关联，即试图以

最低加工成本获取足够的语境效果，使交际者的意图与接受者的期待相一致，从

而使交际获得成功。

在翻译这一特殊的语际言语交际活动中，认知环境内容与结构上的差异必然

导致译语读者无法像原语读者那样抽调原语作者意指的语境假设，从而无法以类

似程度的处理努力获得足够的语境效果。因此，译者首先应寻求原语对于原语读

者的最佳关联，推断出原语作者的意图及其意指的语境假设，然后通过调整译语，

把最佳关联传递给译语读者，使其能以类似的处理努力获得必须的语境假设，进

而取得足够的语境效果。

关联理论对翻译的强解释力充分体现于其对广告翻译的指导作用。同时，由

于广告译文本身即是广告，因此必须特别考虑广告译文作为广告的实际效果。

本文结合以认知语用观为导向的关联理论来探讨广告翻译的原则标准，并在

此基础上通过实例分析提出切实可行的广告翻译流程。

关键词：最佳关联、广告翻译、处理努力、语境效果、语境假设

Relevance Theory and the Translation of Advertisements

Abstract

In relevance theory, the context of an utterance refers to a subset of an individual’s

old assumptions in his cognitive environment. If the new information derived from the

utterance could be combined with the old contextual assumptions to yield contextual

effect, the new information is considered relevant in that context. As context is

organized in a certain way, people need different processing effort to access even the

same contextual assumption on different occasions. The assessment of relevance is a

matter of balancing contextual effect against processing effort. Other things being equal,

an assumption with greater contextual effect is more relevant; and, other things being

equal, an assumption requiring less processing effort is more relevant. In

communication, both the communicator and the audience are supposed to automatically

search for optimal relevance in an attempt to obtain adequate contextual effect with no

unjustifiable processing effort. This is a dynamic process that takes place

subconsciously in human minds. When the process is carried out and the expectation of

the audience is brought to meet the intention of the communicator, the communication

succeeds.

Translation is a special type of inter-lingual verbal communication. Because of the

difference in the content and structure of cognitive environment between the source text

audience and the target text audience, the latter could not access the author-intended

contextual assumptions the way the former could. Therefore, the translator should first

find out the author-intended contextual assumptions and interpretation by identifying

the optimal relevance of the source text to the source text audience. Then, he should try

to transfer such optimal relevance to the target text audience by adjusting his translation,

so that the target text audience could also obtain adequate contextual effect with no

unjustifiable effort.

The effective and powerful role that relevance theory plays in theoretically guiding

translating activities could be fully proved in the translation of advertisement. Allowing

for the fact that the translated version of an advertisement is an advertisement itself,

translators of advertisements are required to take full consideration of the practical

effects of their translations by resorting to various techniques.

Guided with relevance theory in a cognitive pragmatics framework, the author

attempts in this paper to seek a fundamental criterion for the translation of

advertisements and also ventures to provide a practical operational procedure through

convincing analysis of various examples.

Key words: optimal relevance, the translation of advertisements, processing effort,

contextual effect, contextual assumption

Introduction

With China’s establishment of the market economy and her entry into the WTO,

advertising is playing a more and more important role on both Chinese and international

markets. While domestic enterprises or companies are trying to promote their products

on the international market, overseas or multinational companies are engaged in

boosting their shares of the huge Chinese market, the most alluring market in the world,

with the aid of their overwhelming advertising strategies. It can often be seen that many

a time the success of a product or service is in effect the success of its advertisements,

which have attracted more consumers’ attention than its rivals. Considering the

language barrier existing in an alien culture, advertisers have to thoughtfully translate

their advertisements into the target language in order to get access to the ordinary

consumers who are supposed to have little or no knowledge of the foreign language.

People will not buy any products that they know nothing about or that are too

commonplace to arouse their interest of purchasing, so the vital importance of the

translation of advertisements is beyond doubt.

We have seen a lot of advertisement translations, both from Chinese to English and

from English to Chinese, in our daily life as well as in our academic practice. There are,

of course, many successful examples, but more often than not, we are disappointed to

find poor adaptations of the comparatively successful originals. Several reasons may

account for such failures, language incompetence for instance, yet the most typical one

is that the translator does not realize the essence of an advertisement translation. Besides

being a translation, an advertisement translation is, first and foremost, an advertisement

itself. It must conform to all the criteria for an advertisement. If the translation can not

realize the required functions of an advertisement, it is then usually a total waste of time,

energy and money. Thus, we had better make it clear that the translation of

advertisement is very much different from other types of translation.

How is it different, then? How could we vividly present these differences in our

translation? Is there an operational model that could theorize the advertisement

translating practice?

Insomuch as the translation of advertisements remains a type of translation, it should

first be subject to the interpretation of the most fundamental theory of translation, if

there is such a kind of theory. As is known to all, although there are still disputes as to

whether translation is a science or an art, the theoretical pursuit began to flourish as

early as in the 1950’s in the hope of building translation into a tangible discipline.

Various approaches have been deplored over the past decades. Eugene A. Nida and

Peter Newmark studied translation from the perspective of social semiotics. Wolfram

Wilss proposed a discourse linguistic approach in The Science of Translation: Problems

and Methods. A.V. Fedorov first put forward the concept of equivalence in his

Relevance Theory and the Translation of Advertisements

Introduction to the Theory of Translation. J.C. Catford used a descriptive linguistic way

in his research, so on and so forth.

These theories are inspiring, but in some cases they are also quite confusing. One of

the reasons may be the fact that the authors invariably tried to put forward a definition

of translation, which is often too difficult to satisfy everyone. In 1986, American

linguists Dan Sperber and Deidre Wilson published their book entitled Relevance:

Communication and Cognition, in which the concept of relevance, i.e. one of the four

principles of conversation proposed by H.P. Grice, was greatly extended and enriched.

Ernst-August Gutt, their student, inspired by relevance theory, studied translation with

this new perspective. In his doctoral dissertation, he inherited several key concepts of

relevance, such as: context, manifestness, cognition, mutual cognitive environment,

relevance, processing effort, contextual effect, optimal relevance and

ostensive-inferential communication. In 1991, Gutt published his book Translation and

Relevance: Cognition and Context, catching wide scholarly attention in major western

countries. One of the main conclusions reached by Gutt is that optimal relevance should

be the ultimate goal of translation. The task of the translator is to make the author’s

intention meet with the target text audience’s expectation, and translation is not simply

transferring the meaning, but more importantly, transferring the author’s intention. The

distinctive feature of this approach is that it puts its focus on ‘why translating?’ and

‘how translating’ without mentioning the question ‘what is translation?' In this way we

could develop a theory that is more operational and less controversial. Besides, since

both translation and advertising are forms of communication and should be separately

subject to the interpretation of relevance theory, we could hopefully find this theory a

solution to our puzzles in the translation of advertisements when they are closely

combined together.

This paper is mainly devoted to making an analysis on various advertisement

translations from the perspective of relevance theory in the hope of finding a solution

that is applicable to most of the advertisement translating practices.

The allocation of the paper is designed in the following way:

Chapter I gives a detailed explanation of some of the key concepts in relevance

theory in a logical sequence to show the author’s personal understanding of the theory.

Chapter II presents our understanding of translation from a relevance-theoretical

viewpoint and lists the advantages of this approach by falsifying two dominant concepts

in translation: untranslatability and equivalence, and by settling the debate between

literal and liberal translation.

Chapter III aims to analyze the features of both the advertisement itself and the

translation of advertisements and the requirements for successfully translating an

Introduction

advertisement from the perspective of relevance theory.

Chapter IV presents the criterion for the translation of advertisements and also a

concrete operational procedure.

Finally, an attempted solution is given in the Conclusion.

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摘要：

RelevanceTheoryandtheTranslatingofAdvertisementIV摘要关联理论认为，当新信息在某个特定的语境中，结合语境假设能产生语境效果时，这一信息对该语境就具有关联性。语境是指人们为处理信息而从其认知环境中抽调出来的一个假设子集。抽调语境假设需花费处理努力，不同场合调用同一假设所需的处理努力不同。关联性是个相对概念，其强弱取决于两个因素：语境效果与处理努力。同等条件下，语境效果越大，关联性越强;处理努力越小，关联性越强。在人类交际活动中，交际双方会潜意识地寻求最佳关联，即试图以最低加工成本获取足够的语境效果，使交际者的意图与接受者的期待相一致，从而使交际获得...

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