Recontextualization In Intertextual Translation

From the perspective of intertextuality, translation itself is an intertextual activity. From the perspective of recontextualization, translation is an act of recontextualization. The production of an target text is the result of deconstructing and reconstructing of its source text context in the translating process. This research holds that the translator is the focus in the translating process, and recontextualization is realized through the translator's translating process.After having made a brief review of some scholars'views on translation context, the researcher points out that translation context is different from the source text context, source language context and target language context. It does not exist before translating process begins. Instead, it is constructed by the translator through his efforts in his translating process. The reason why it is called recontextualization is that the translated context must keep the maximal correspondence to the context in the source language text from the aspect of intertextuality.Based on the previous researches on intertextuality, intertextual translation, translation context and recontextualization, this research has intergrated the theories of intertextuality and context into translation studies. It explores how a translator constructs in the target text a translated context (or target language discourse context), and how the translated context keeps the maximal correspondence to the context in the source language text from the aspects of manifest intertextuality and constitutive intertextuality. In other words, by studying the translating process of a translator, we can account for aspects of the translating process so as to guide the recontextualization of translation in intertexts.The theoretical framework of this dissertation has been tentatively established by revising Hatim and Mason's model of recognition and transfer of intertextual reference from ST (short for source text) to TT (short for target text). That is, intertextual translation is believed to be the transferring process (accomadation, adaptation, etc.) of intertextual references from the source text to the target one. In specific terms, intertextual translating process can be regarded as consisting of three stages: referent-identification phase (recognition of the presense of an intertextual expression), interpreting phase (comprehension of its associations), and expressing phase (relaying it across languages). The process of recontextualization in intertextual translation can be explained as follows: the translator at first recognizes the intertextual referents at the identifying phase, and then he makes uses of the source context to understand the intertextual referents at his interpreting phase, and finally at the expressing phase he selects appropriate ways of expression to translate these intertextual referents into target language. Then from the perspective of translation criticism, this dissertation discusses contextual horizons for translators and researchers, which are helpful for explaining recontextualization proccess for translators and translation researchers.From a literature review, the researcher has found that the categorizations and manifestation forms of intertextuality are not distinguished clearly in most of the previous studies. The researcher will use Fairclough's terms Manifest Intertextuality and Constitutive intertextuality, but deals them differently from him. That is, the research will discuss four main manifestation forms of manifest intertextuality——quotation, allusion, common saying (including formula, idiom, proverb and colloquialism) and meditation, and four main manifestation forms——genre, motif, structure and function. Moreover, starting from the perspective of a comparison between Chinese and English, this research points out:―明引‖is almost equivalent to quotation and―暗引‖is almost equivalent to allusion. The term allusion is adopted in this research instead of literary allusion, for apart from citing or referring to a celebrated work, the allusions also originate from historic allusions, historic figures and other sources. Cliché, conventionalism and proverb are grouped into the category of common saying in this dissertation. This is because in Chinese, common saying in its broad sense contains proverbs, Chinese wisecracks (歇后语), idiomatic phrases, dialects and slangs. Meditation appears in various forms in Hong Lou Meng, for example, the writer's narration, the story-teller's habitual way of telling a story, the Stone's monologue and engagement in the story as an invisible writer. The research also discusses the definitions of genre in literary work. In addition, the research has retrieved many data from the corpora of Hong Lou Meng to analyze in detail how to carry out recontextualization in the translating process to realize the intention of the source text, and how to make the target-text context keep the maximal correspondence to the source-text context from the aspects of genre, motif, structure and function.This dissertation argues that different translation methods used in intertextual translation by professional translators are actually the result of relevance norm applied to recontextualization in intertextual translation from three aspects. In other words, relevance norm is related to the author's intention and the reader's expectation, the style of the target language chosen for the target text, and the inter-subjectivity between the author, translator and reader. Then ten basic translation strategies (literal translation, paraphrase, amplification, omission, annotation, combination, substitution, shift of perspective, generalization and creative translation) are discussed.This research can be classified as qualitative analysis. The data are from the parallel corpora of Hong Lou Meng and other literary works, including some students'translation errors, which serve primarily as the evidence for the illustrative purposes rather than the data-driven conclusion. On the basis of the previous studies of intertexuality-based translation and those of recontextualization in translation, the researcher of the present study has carried out a case study, namely, an examination of the first eighty chapters of the two full English translations of Hong Lou Meng by the Yangs and Hawkes respectively. The researcher contends that translation is in fact the recontextualization of the source text in the social-cultural context of the target text.There are five major findings: (1) translating process is in fact the process of recontextualization; (2) the process of recontextualization in intertextual translation is different from that of traditional translation; (3) recontextualization in intertextual translation is the process of the translator's endeavours to construct in the target text a translated context which keeps the maximal correspondence to the context in the source text on the manifest intertextuality and constitutive intertextuality; (4) translators'different translation strategies are in fact influenced by Relevance norm; (5) the perspective of recontextualization and intertextuality provides a new approach for translators and translation researchers.In spite of the limitations of this research, it also has theoretical and practical implications. The theoretical implications can be stated as follows: (1) it broadens the scope of the perspectives of studying translation and makes the research method more scientifically; (2) it promotes the research of the impacts of theories of intertextuality and context on translation study; (3) it necessitates the urge for a re-examination of the existing theories of translation criticism. As to its practical implications, it is helpful for students to understand the translating process, and thus helps them do a better work in translation practice. It is also helpful for researcher to study Hong Lou Meng from the new perspective.