On the Translation of the Chapter 31 of A Dream of Red Mansions from the Perspective of Relevance Theory

Abstract

As one of the four famous works in China, A Dream of Red Mansions enjoys reputation of all over the word and gains numerous readers. It reflects the background and conditions of Chinese ancient feudal society. To this end, it remain a great work in Chinese literature. Moreover, its language is simple, natural, beautiful and humorous. There are many Chinese cultural words in it, which need the translator to think deeply, and then translate, figure out the tone of the article and combine the context to achieve the harmony among the author, translator and reader. This paper aims to analyze the translation of words and sentences in Chapter 31 of A Dream of Red Mansions under the guidance of the Relevance Theory. And it seeks to find the translation methods and strategies that can be adopted when using the Relevance Theory, with the aim to achieve the optimal relevance between the source text and the target text.