本文是一篇英语论文，笔者在分析文章的基本语言特点后，翻译过程采用了关联理论作为指导理论。从不同层面选用翻译技巧进行翻译尝试。
Chapter 1 Task Description
1.1 Selection of the Source Text
The selection of text is mainly based on the following two aspects：
First of all, from my personal interest, the complicated background, the ups and downs of the plot, and the exciting story in the mystery novel constitute the core parts of the whole suspense novel. By setting up the suspense atmosphere, the author attracts readers to be highly concentrated in order to understand the mystery of this novel. To a certain extent, the mystery novel is a game for smart men. Many people need to follow the characters in the book to explore, which adds the unique intellectual charm of mystery novels (Lu, 2021). It is such a distinctive charm that has great appeal to the translator.
Moreover, The Paris Apartment is a mystery novel with glamorous perspectives and peculiar plots. Readers urgently hope to follow the author’s mind to find the murderer and find out the truth as soon as possible. The novel is characterized by distinctive language, which describes the story from multi-person perspectives. In the novel, there are a large number of cultural loaded words, with mostly short sentences and that tend to be colloquial. This kind of literary translation is a new challenge for the translator, and the translator hopes to improve the translation level in the field of literary translation through this study.
1.2 Description of the Source Text
The Paris Apartment was written by Lucy Foley, a popular British detective novel writer known as “contemporary Agatha” by the British media. She studied literature at Durham University and University College London. She worked as a novel editor for several years, during which time she began writing her first novel The Book of Lost and Found. Her writing style is to piece together the entire story through narratives from different perspectives.
The story begins with a stepsister who comes to look for her brother. Nevertheless, she found that her brother suddenly disappeared when she went to visit him, leaving only voice messages that stopped abruptly, which puzzled Jess. She didn’t find all kinds of strange things until she began to contact Ben’s neighbors gradually, and realized that they avoided talking about Ben. Some seemed enthusiastic, but they all hid secrets. The disappeared brother runs through the whole novel. Although he hardly appeared in a real image, a complex and multifaceted image gradually was filled out in the storyline and other people’s descriptions.
Chapter 2 Theoretical Framework
2.1 Introduction to Relevance Theory
Sperber and Wilson put forward this theory in 1986 in Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Sperber and Wilson believe that language communication is an ostensive- inferential process. On this basis, Ernst August Gutt attempted to apply it to translation studies (Huang, 2011). He held that translation is a communicative act and the application of relevance theory inevitably leads to translation being regarded as a part of communication (Gutt, 1989). Subsequently, Sperber and Wilson revised their book Relevance: Communication and Cognition in 1995. They broke down the relevance principle into two principles: optimal relevance and maximal relevance. Gutt (1991) said that the cognitive relevance principle pursues maximal relevance, which means “to have the greatest contextual effect with the least processing effort”, and the latter refers to optimal relevance, which means “to have adequate contextual effects without gratuitous processing effort”.
The application of relevance theory in the academic community of China has shown initial results. In 1994, relevance translation theory was first introduced to China by Lin Kenan. Subsequently, it was introduced and commented upon by scholars such as He Ziran, Zhao Yanchun, and Meng Jiangang, and had a significant impact on the translation industry in China (Hua & He, 2012). Zhai (2013) explained the significance of appropriate learning material of middle school English reading teaching from the perspective of relevance theory, and summarized strategies of English reading teaching. Long and Cai (2020) summarized the views on translation under relevance theory and studied the theoretical guidance for translation practice.
2.2 Reasons for Choosing Relevance Theory
Horror and suspense novels are popular novels that rely on the mysterious and terrifying atmosphere to arouse readers’ interest in reading (Lou, 2013). The source text belongs to a suspense novel, with a mysterious and exciting plot, subtle logical development, and complex character relationships, which have distinct characteristics. The most classic part of suspense novels is that the author creates a sufficient suspense atmosphere for readers from the beginning, and then uses the stories to promote the development of the plot, in order to attract readers to gradually unveil the mystery (Wang, 2012). There are a large amount of environmental descriptions, character psychological descriptions, and various details, which can create the atmosphere of the story and fascinate readers.
Therefore, the translator needs to correctly handle the relevant descriptions in the original text during the translation process, and focuses on showing the suspense atmosphere and character characteristics through translation. At the same time, relevance theory suggests that the degree of relevance of a discourse is related to contextual effects. In order to achieve the best correlation between texts, the translator needs to create a contextual effect similar to the original text for readers, so that they do not spend a lot of effort to obtain sufficient contextual effects. This concept coincides with the optimal principle of relevance theory. Therefore, the translator chooses relevance theory as the guiding theory for the report.
Chapter 3 Translation Process ........................................ 6
3.1 Pre-translation Preparation ............................. 6
3.2 While-translation Procedure .................................. 6
3.3 Post-translation Proofreading .................................... 7
Chapter 4 Case Analysis ...................................... 8
4.1 Translation at Lexical Level ................................ 8
4.1.1 Annotation .......................................... 8
4.1.2 Conversion ....................................... 11
Chapter 5 Conclusion ..................................... 30
5.1 Major Gains............................................ 30
5.2 Limitations .................................... 31
Chapter 4 Case Analysis
4.1 Translation at Lexical Level
The use of vocabulary in literary works is very flexible and involves a wide range of aspects, requiring translators to carefully consider each word (Tian, 2016). Before the translation of the text, the translator understands the cultural background and makes a detailed understanding of language characteristics and styles so as to better understand and grasp the source text and completely convey the author’s intention to the readers. Therefore, under the guidance of relevance theory, the translator adopts a series of translation skills to conduct case analysis at lexical level.
4.1.1 Annotation
There are different thinking modes between China and the West, and different thinking modes inevitably affect the different expression forms between English and Chinese (Tan, 2013). In this suspense novel, the appearance of many culture-loaded words, foreign brand names, etc. causes difficulties for readers in reading and understanding the text. Therefore, the translator uses the annotation skill to create a cognitive context similar to the original for Chinese readers. Under the same cognitive context, Chinese readers can get the author’s real communicative intention and obtain sufficient contextual effects when dealing with unfamiliar words and phrases (Feng, 2020).
Chapter 5 Conclusion
5.1 Major Gains
The main research findings of this practice report are as follows:
At first, in the process of translation practice, the translator combined the stylistic and language characteristics of suspense novels and prove the significance of relevance theory in guiding suspense novels. This report is guided by relevance theory and analyzes cases from three levels: lexical, syntactic, and textual. As a suspense novel, this type of novel has its unique characteristics, with a large number of vocabulary expressions related to foreign cultures in the text. The sentences are mostly short and colloquial. At the same time, suspense novels have strong logic and rigorous story structure. Therefore, the analysis of this theory at three levels is comprehensive and detailed.
In the process of translating detective fiction, the characteristics of detective fiction should be taken into account so as to choose a more appropriate expression style (Ao, 2018). The translator studies the most suitable translation skills for The Paris Apartment from three levels. The selection of translation skills will also be based on the specific situation in the text (Fang, 2012). Guided by relevance theory, annotation is used to help Chinese readers better understand the specific meanings of certain special words. Amplification, omission, paraphrasing, and negation can better serve the target readers and convey the communicative context of the original work, achieving optimal relevance of the text.
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