On Decoding Models For The Source Language Text

Beginning with nature of translation, this thesis expounds that different definitions given to nature of translation may be right if they are looked at from different angles, and that the process of translating (rather than translation) which is involved in science of translation or translatology must be a focus for translation theorists and translators to concentrate their efforts on, for they should better go more about the problem-solving than the problem-posing. The process of problem-solving roughly refers to decoding of the source language text and trans/encoding into the target language text. But in fact, it has more than those two simple steps. This thesis has briefly illustrated steps or procedures which are involved in the process of translating or the translating procedures. In order to render fuller meanings of the source language text, the translator had better employ a more specific technique ?to decode the text.To decode the text is a premise for comprehension of the source language text, while to understand the text is a roughly generalized and abstract technique. Why decoding is employed has been expounded from the perspectives of nature of language and the translator's task that he must disclose the intentions of a text or the text's writer. In the course of decoding, he may initially have access to the linguistically overt meanings of the text, then the linguistically covert meanings, and in the end he may have to turn to other means for non-linguistically covert meanings of the source language text. In this thesis, two approaches are offered, one being the intralinguistic approach, the other the extralinguistic approach.The intralinguistic approach consist of two models: the model of the deep structures and the model of discourse analysis. Based on"modern" linguistics, the former model comparatively discusses Noam Chomsky's theory of the deep structure and Nida's theory of the deep structure. Both of their theories were put forward for filling the traps in understanding. Their theories, though, proposed from different angles, are still important and efficient for the translator to decode the implicit message contained in the source language text. The latter one deals with the source text in light of discourse analysis - linguistic analysis beyond a sentence, i.e. analysis of discourse with the text as a unit.The other approach - the extralinguistic - is composed of three models to be discussed in this thesis: the historic, cultural and hermeneutic models. The first model of this approach deals with decoding of the source language text influenced by changes in the history of culture (or better the language). The other model - the cultural - is concerned with language being part of and a carrier of its culture. Naturally, the text is bound to be negotiated well with culture, to reflect the culture, and to be closely associated with its user or writer. For decoding, these elements, of course, should be taken into account. The last model - the hermeneutic - is to give the translator another different angle to be taken for decoding. It is used primarily by individual thinkers who try to arrive single-handedly at universally valid ideas, truths and grammatical forms. It is an act to elicit the truth and decode intentions of the writer of the source language text before the appropriate transfer of meanings.By all these decoding models, the author of this thesis would mean that the translator should better employ some better and efficient ways or a systematic continuum to discover the implicit meanings of the text or the intentions of the text's writer in order to trans/encode fully into the target text.