Translation Studied From The Perspective Of Context

Traditional translation studies have made much progress in many areas, but there still exist some problems, for example, context has not been paid enough attention to, the relationship between context and translation and the function of context in translation have not been systematically discussed. This thesis, under the guidance of Relevance Theory, has made a systematical study of the relationship between context and translation and the influence of context on translation.In this thesis, context is defined as all the factors that influence the use and comprehension of language and, in the light of its influence on translation, classified into linguistic context and non-linguistic context, with the former including phonetic context, lexical context, grammatical context, semantic context, etc., and the latter including cultural context, situational context and stylistic context.The thesis holds that translation is a form of communication, relevance is the basis of communication and is determined by context, and, therefore, context is a decisive factor influencing translation, which should be taken into great account in the whole course of translation. With this point in view, the thesis has analyzed the relationship between context and translation and its function in translation, and the general principles and strategies of translation have been discussed from the perspective of context, the principles including determining the meaning of the source text according to its context, determining the expression of the target text according to its context and striving for equivalence of context wherever possible, and the strategies including foreignizing whenever foreignization is needed by the context and domesticating whenever domestication is needed. On the basis of this, the thesis has translated some English and Chinese texts. The result indicates that the function of context on translation is absolute and undeniable, because context determines the meaning of the source text, context determines the selection of the translation strategy and context determines the expression of the target text.