Chapter 3 is the main body of paper and offers definitions of idioms as well as characteristics of English and Chinese Body-related Idioms。 Besides, this chapter probes into the body-related idioms translation from the perspective of Relevance Theory, and put forward some translation strategies and suggestions。

Chapter 4 ends the paper with a conclusion。

2。 Literature Review

2。1 An Overview of Relevance Theory

On the basis of the Theory of Conversational Implicature proposed by Grice, Sperber and Wilson first put forward their Relevance Theory in their book Relevance: Communication and Cognition in 1986。 It indicates that communication is an ostensive-inferential process of mutual manifestness。 In this process, the speaker clearly expresses his intention to the audience by “ostension”, while the audience gets the meaning of the information with context assumption by “inferention”。 Relevance theory is presented on the foundation of the definition of "relevance" and two principles, namely, cognitive principle and communicative principle。 Relevance is seen as a kind of language input in the cognitive process, including words, ideas, memory, behavior, sound, sight, smell, and so on。 By inference, if this kind of language input is worthy to the hearer, so it is relevant to the hearer。 Relevance is a relation between the given assumption and a given context (Sperber&Wilson, 1986:142)。 The degree of relevance depends on two facts: contextual effect and processing effort。 Under the same situation, contextual effect is proportional to the relevance, while processing effort is inversely proportional to the relevance。 That is, the greater the contextual effects the audience achieves, the greater the relevance of the text; but the fewer the processing effort the audience needs to get these effects, the stronger the relevance。 

2。2 Related Studies on the Application of Relevance Theory into Translation

2。2。1 Application of Relevance Theory in Translation Abroad

The proposal of relevance theory has attracted great attention of linguists and was soon applied in the field of cognitive pragmatics, such as second language teaching, cognitive psychology, phonology and so on。 It has to be mentioned that translation is undoubtedly one of the largest subjects affected by relevance theory。 文献综述

The relevance theory was successfully brought into the translation field by some scholars, such as Gutt, E。A。, Olsen, Kovack, etc。 Among them, Gutt, the student of Wilson, made the greatest contributions for the first one to apply the relevance into translation in his book Translation and Relevance: Cognition and Context in 1991。 Then he published his second expanded edition of this book in April 2000。 He pointed out translation is an ostensive-inferential communication activity closely related to the brain mechanism of human beings。 Translator's responsibility is to try to conform the original intention of the author and the hope of readers。 In other words, the job of translator is to seek for optimal relevance of source text and contextual assumption and provide an optimal contextual effect for the readers。

Generally speaking, Gutt’s relevance theory has a strong explanatory power。 It can be used to explain sorts of translation theories and various phenomena of translation seemed in contradiction。 Not only does it provide a unified theoretic framework for translation, but also it offers a basic methodology for translation。

2。2。2 Application of Relevance Theory in Translation in China

Shen Jiaxuan and He Ziren are the main linguistic scholars who introduced the relevance theory into China at the earliest time。 In 1988, Shen Jiaxuan firstly introduced the book Relevance: Communication and Cognition (Sperber&Wilson, 1986) in his paper Fast Delivery and the Relevance of Cognition。 In recent years, relevance theory has caught more and more domestic scholars’ eyes such as He Ziran (1997), Zhao Yanchun (1999),He Zhaoxiong (2000)，Jiang Wangqi (2000) and Ran Yongping (2001、2002), etc。 They also brought lots of work on the explorations of relevance theory。