Text-based Translation Study

Translation study has long been associated with modern linguistics. Modern linguistics, largely focusing on language itself, at or below the sentential level, however, has been far from enough to provide a satisfactory tool to translation study, for translation goes beyond the syntactic level and concerns the whole text. Translation is far more than a linguistic process and must be based on texts as an integrated whole. As a result, it is indispensable to study translation from a textual or suprasentential level. Textlinguistics, a discipline which studies languages from a textual as well as a contextual and communicative perspective, seems to be the right tool for translation study.Textlinguistics-based2 translation study could be conducted at two levels, namely, text-centered or intratextual (co-textual) and user-centered or extratextual (contextual) levels. Text-centered translation study focuses on the internal factors of the text, for example, cohesion and coherence, text structure, etc., while user-centered translation study focuses on external factors of the text, for instance, the author's intention, text-function, register, Hu Zhuangling (胡壮麟. 1994:1-2) holds that a text (语篇) could be as short as a single word and as long as a whole novel, including a phrase, a clause, a sentence, a passage in between as long as it assumes a complete and intact communicative function. In other words, a text is a piece of language that performs a communicative function in a given context, free from grammatical or syntactic constraints. In this thesis, text and discourse refer to the same notion.2 In this thesis, textlinguistics-based translation study and text-based translation study are of the same notion because textlinguistics focuses on the study of languages from a textual perspective.contextual and cultural norms. The studies of translation from intratextual and extratextual perspectives, however, are to a great extent interwoven and overlapped. The study from one perspective cannot be achieved without taking the other into consideration.All the communicative functions, narrative function, descriptive function, expository function, directive function, and binding function, etc., are achieved with their relevant linguistic forms and textual features. As a result, a translator should not only recognize the function of the ST, but also reproduce its relevant communicative function in TT. In this process, he/she must have a clear idea of the textual features of TT for different functions and make use of them to endow the TT with its particular communicative function.The texts with similar communicative purpose in a given register have a lot in common in terms of terminology, sentence pattern, rhetoric, structure, and other textual features. The language in different register assumes its distinct textual features so as to substantiate its function. Translators very often find the texttypes of a given field can be referred to as a valuable databank or parallel texts when they do translation of the same field. The tenor, another aspect of register, of a text should also be reproduced in translation on most occasions if the reasons for shift of tenor do not suffice.Cultural difference presents a challenge for the translator, especially for the translator of literary texts. It is significant for him/her to be aware of cultural difference and apply appropriate approaches (alienation, adaptation, blocking, and annotation, etc.) to it in translation. The translated work may arouse misunderstanding or make no sense at all to the TT readers unlessthe cultural difference has been taken into full account.Text-based translation study has undoubtedly opened a new window into the study of translation.