Abstract：Metaphor is a language phenomenon with a history of 2,000 years. Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory provides a new perspective on the study of metaphor translation. Based on the theory, translation is an ostensive-inferential process of interpretation of language, a kind of speech communication, and the inference is from relevance. Metaphor is the natural results of cognitive reasoning ability, and the essence of its translation is an interpretive use of language as other communicative activities and pursues the optimal relevance to help readers obtain the maximum contextual effect with minimal processing effort. Therefore, in the process of metaphor translation, translators should first determine the communicative intention, and then reconstruct the metaphor in the cognitive context of the target language readers to achieve the optimal relevance and ensure the target readers and the readers of the source text react the same to the metaphor.
Shen Congwen’s The Border Town is famous for its “metaphorical structure”. With analysis of the 2011 English version by Yang Hsien-yi and GladysYang, the author explores how to handle the metaphor translation with domestication and foreignization to faithfully reproduce the original contextual assumptions and discourse meanings from the perspective of Relevance Theory.
Key words: metaphor Relevance Theory domestication foreignization
摘要：隐喻作为一种语言现象，其研究有着两年多年的历史。Sperber 和Wilson提出的关联理论为隐喻翻译提供了新的研究视角。基于关联理论，翻译是一个对原语进行阐释的动态明示—推理的过程，是一种言语交际行为，其推理所依据的就是关联性，而隐喻是认知推理能力自然发展的结果，其翻译的本质和其他语言交际活动一样，是一种语言的释义性使用，追求最佳关联性，即使读者以最小的努力获得最大的语境效果。因此隐喻翻译中，译者应首先确定自己的交际意图，然后在目的语读者的认知语境下，重新构建原文中隐喻，以达到最佳关联的目的，保证达到译文读者和原文读者面对同一隐喻做出同样的反映。
沈从文《边城》因其“隐喻性结构”而著称。本文以杨宪益、戴乃迭先生2011年的英译本为例，从关联理论的视角出发，探讨如何借助归化和异化灵活处理《边城》中隐喻的翻译，以忠实再现原文语境假设和话语含义。
关键词： 隐喻; 关联理论; 归化； 异化
