Explorations into the Essence of English—Chinese and Chinese—English Translation Based on Relevance Theory

The relevance theory is a cognitive pragmatic theory considerably influential in the West in recent years, though its impacts have gone far beyond the limits of pragmatics. Translation ranks among the disciplines most influenced by relevance theory, which has drawn attention of Chinese scholars in the past decades. However, the impacts of relevance theory on translation in China are far from being strong with inadequate relevant documents. Relevance theory has not only revealed the essence of translation and the subjects of translation study, but also falsified the untranslatability and the principle of equivalence; relevance theory can also help translators to accurately understand and convey the intentions of the source communicators and cater for the cognitive context of the recipients of translation.