[Abstract]
Sperber and Wilson first put forward the Relevance Theory, which explains linguistic activities in the framework of cognition. Their student Ernst-August Gutt applied it to translation studies and got an encouraging result. He pointed out that translation is not only a communicative activity, but also a cognitive activity. Context plays a very important role in our understanding of the utterance and text. A successful translation requires the translator to reason according to the dynamic context, which depends so much on the relevance of the language and environment. In fact, the process of translation is a process of context reasoning and selecting, which is always dynamic and developing as the circumstances change. During the process of translation, the main task of translator is to find out the relevance, especially the optimal relevance between the language and context. According to the principle of the optimal relevance, the translator could understand the original text correctly, and then translate it into target language appropriately by composing and reasoning the most suitable context. Discussing on context in the perspective of relevance theory provides a new view to study and practice translation.
[Key Words] Translation; communication; relevance theory; optimal relevance; cognitive context; dynamic context
【摘 要】关联理论是由Sperber and Wilson 最早提出的，它从认知的角度解释了许多的语言活动。随后，Wilson的学生Gutt 最早把这一理论运用于翻译研究中，并取得突破性的进展。他还指出，翻译不仅仅是一项交际活动，更是一项认知活动。在我们理解一段话语或文字的时候，语境往往起着非常重要的作用。成功的翻译往往要求翻译者能够根据动态语境进行推理，而动态语境又依赖于语言与环境的关联。实际上，翻译的过程就是一个语境推理和选择的动态的，不断发展的过程。因此，在翻译的过程中，译者的主要任务就是找出语言与语境之间的关联，特别是最佳关联。根据最佳关联理论，翻译者就能通过构建最适合的语境，准确地理解源语文章，并且比较贴切地把它翻译成目的语。因此，从语用关联的角度探讨语境问题为我们的翻译研究和翻译实践提供了一个全新的视角。
【关键词】翻译；交际活动；关联理论；最佳关联；认知语境；动态语境
