Discrepancies in poetic discourse: A translation process from a relevance-theoretic perspective

Abstract

This article intends to demonstrate a process that assigns a poem translation practice to relevance theory (RT). As a theoretical account and approach to human communication, it has enjoyed increasing popularity in translation studies around the world. After this article describes Ernst-August Gutt's account built on RT, it elaborates on a translator's inferential processes on a chosen concrete poem entitled ⟪走不出逝去的心境⟫ from Chinese-to-English and tests a hypothesis that Gutt's statements could guide a translator for the practice of this language pair. The discussion unveils the translator's relevant workings in the poetic context and serves its purpose in two folds. One is to validate the hypothesis, and the other is a call for more empirical demonstrations to circumvent limitations imposed by the account on reflecting affective states. This article elucidates an underexplored area of translation studies with the processing from a translator's point of view of a realistic working situation, accesses the interface between the translation process and product, and points out potential inquiries to be explored.