An Analysis Of Contextual Factors Influencing The Process Of Interlingual Pragmatic Enrichment In Legislative Text Translation

Interlingual pragmatic enrichment in translation involves two aspects,i.e.utterance interpretation and utterance production.Therefore,the process of interlingual pragmatic enrichment in translation is comprised of two steps.Context has a strong influence on the two steps.First,when translators try to understand the source text,translators need to pragmatically enrich the semantic representations or the literal meanings of linguistic expressions.That is to say,translators need to determine the exact meanings of linguistic expressions according to context in the manner of modulating word meanings and recovering unarticulated constituents.Second,translators should make the result of pragmatic enrichment manifest to target readers in translation according to context.Context plays an important role in the process of interlingual pragmatic enrichment.However,in terms of legal translation,previous studies pay more attention to the process and the classification of interlingual pragmatic enrichment.Very few scholars,if any,conduct studies on the influence of context on the process of interlingual pragmatic enrichment.On the basis of previous studies on context,contextual factors are classified into three types: linguistic context,legal cultural context,and context of situation.In this study,Chinese legislative texts and their English versions are selected as research data.Comparative analysis approach is taken to explore the interlingual pragmatic enrichment carried out by legal translators and then to explore the influence of different contextual factors on the process of interlingual pragmatic enrichment in legislative text translation at great length.Through comparatively analyzing Chinese legislative texts and their English versions,this study has the following findings: linguistic context mainly influences the process of deictic enrichment and enrichment of discourse relations;legal cultural context mainly influences the process of conceptual enrichment;situational context mainly influences the process of enrichment of modality.This thesis is a supplement to the previous studies on interlingual pragmatic enrichment.Therefore,this study can help legal translators to deepen understanding of interlingual pragmatic enrichment,correctly carry out interlingual pragmatic enrichment,and produce high-quality translation.