Translation And Contextualization

The translation of The Confucian Analects, which represents the culmination of Chinese classics, is of utmost importance in spreading traditional Chinese culture. This dissertation is intended to explore"contextualization‖in various senses involved in the translating and translations of the Confucian Analects based on the paratexts of its different versions.The circle of translation studies has been aware of the fact that closer attention to processes of contextualization in both the production and reception of translated texts is more enlightening than any static listing of contextual variables which is far from being enough to explain the dynamic translating reality. However, the word"contextualization‖has been used in different senses at different levels in translation studies. For instance,"contextualization‖is highly valued in DTS (Descriptive Translation Studies) which abandon the traditional idea of correspondence between the source text and the target text, take translations as facts of the target culture and focus on the target culture and reception context. Therefore,"contextualization‖in the DTS sense means commenting and assessing a translation or a translation activity in a wider social, cultural and historical context. For this reason,"contextualization‖in DTS can contribute to more objective translation criticism. In the meantime,"contextualization‖is also advocated in theology and Bible translation where the word means adapting the message to the receptor culture to make it more understandable and acceptable. For the same reason of understandability,"thick translation‖, at the other extreme of the continuum of contextualization, argues for a reproduction of the source context involved. At the micro operational level, translation is undoubtedly an activity of linguistic communication, a special form of language use which, in itself, is a contextualization process. Therefore, translation is a dual-contextualization process of utilizing, modifying or even reshaping the context to understand the meaning contained in the source text and then generate meaning in the target text. In view of the multiple meanings of the word"contextualization", it is necessary for us to distinguish between"contextualization in translation"and"contextualization of translation", between contextualization at the macro strategic level and that at the micro operational level, and between accommodative contextualization and reconstructive contextualization.To be specific,"contextualization in translation"refers to the contextualized interpretation and re-expression performed by the translator in the translating process while"contextualization of translation"means examining a translation activity in its translation context, thus belonging to the category of translation criticism under the perspective of DTS. The two are different yet interconnected. When contextualizing a translation activity, one needs also to take into account the contextualization efforts made by the translator in the translating process so as to make a comprehensive, accurate and objective judgment of the translator, the translation activity or a particular translational phenomenon. At the macro strategic level, contextualization by a certain translator falls somewhereon a continuum between two extremes– one of extremely accommodative contextualization which focuses on adapting to the target cultural context and the other of extremely reconstructive contextualization which values a reproduction of the original cultural context.At the micro operational level, translation involves two rounds of ostensive-inferential communication (i.e., one between the translator and the author(s) and the other between the translator and the readers). In the first round of communication (to be named the stage of contextualized interpretation), the translator is the receptor who has to infer and interpret message contained in the source text by choosing from, giving up, and rebuilding his/her cognitive context. In the second round of communication (to be called the stage of contextualized re-expression), the translator becomes a speaker/writer who can adopt some contextualization devices and shape a favorable context in order to achieve his/her communicative purposes.On the basis of distinguishing between the different meanings of"contextualization", this dissertation, by observing the paratexts of the different versions of the Confucian Analects, will make specific analysis of the contextualization in various senses involved in the production and reception of the different versions. To achieve this goal, this dissertation will include eight chapters. Chapter 1 gives a brief review of previous researches into the translation of the Confucian Analects and a general introduction to the research perspectives and methods in this current study. The paratext of a translated text is an important perspective to observe translation. However, previous literature has only shown that paratexts in and around a translated text can reveal the translator's motivations, purposes, strategies as well as the prevailing translation norms. This chapter argues that, in addition to revealing the translator's macro strategy, paratexts in and around a translated text can also illustrate the process of the translator's contextualization at the operational level. Past researches into the translating process mostly employ TAP (Think Aloud Protocol) or reverse engineering from the translated text. However, the objects under survey in TAP may not be widely representative and reverse engineering is subject to suspicions of being too subjective. Moreover, since the translator does not necessarily put what he/she understands from the source text into the target text, reverse engineering cannot fully explain the translating process. Fortunately, observation through the paratexts well integrates the merits of the above two methods.Chapter 2 discusses the special characteristics of translating the Confucian Analects and reviews its history of being translated into English. Firstly, the Confucian Analects is special in its linguistic forms and the authority of the original text. Secondly, modern readers of the ancient Chinese classics do not have direct dialogue with the original author(s) and thus cannot achieve a"fusion of horizon". They have to rely, more or less, on the third party, i.e. the authoritative commentators in history. Thirdly, culturally and linguistically speaking, the Chinese culture and Chinese language are high context culture / language while the English culture and English language are low context culture / language. Translating from ancient Chinese into modern English will surely suffer loss of context. All these constitute the special difficulties of translating the Confucian Analects.Chapter 3 reviews the conception of the idea"context"and its development as well as its application in translation studies.Chapter 4 sorts through the different meanings of"contextualization"as employed in translation studies and makes a distinction between"contextualization in translation"and"contextualization of translation", between contextualization at the macro level and that at the micro level, as well as between accommodative contextualization and reconstructive contextualization, thus paving the way for discussions in the subsequent chapters. Chapter 5 and 6 are devoted to the discussion of the contextualization process in translation. Chapter 5 focuses on the stage of contextualized interpretation, exploring how the translator utilizes, modifies and reshapes his/her own cognitive context to understand the message expressed in the source text. It is suggested that in this stage, the translator, based on a trust for the original author(s) and guided by his own schema and reason, tries to analyze and infer the textual meaning to achieve his cognitive consonance at different levels and finally arrive at a reasonable interpretation of the text. Meanwhile, by studying the interpretation of synonyms in the Confucian Analects, it is pointed out that contextualized interpretation is by no means a simple linguistic activity taking place in a vacuum but a complicated one manipulated by powers. Different from that in the stage of re-expression, power that is at work in the stage of interpretation mainly comes from expert power and information power. Chapter 6 probes into the stage of contextualized re-expression at both the macro and micro levels. Macroscopically speaking, contextualization is a continuum between the two extremes of accommodative contextualization and reconstructive contextualization. At the micro level, the chapter mainly looks into two major areas, namely code-switching and versions with comics, analyzing how the translator uses, modifies and even reshapes the context to realize his/her own communicative objectives.Chapter 7 focuses on"contextualization of translation". In other words, this chapter reevaluates the translations by Ku Hung-ming, Joshua Marshman and James Legge by putting the different versions back into their respective translation contexts.The last chapter summarizes the current research. The author points out that a multi-dimensional exploration into the contextualization in different senses in different versions of such a representative classics as the Confucian Analects is surely of great significance to both the translation practice and translation criticism of Chinese classics.