Context And English-Chinese Translation

The essence of translation activities is in fact the transfer of meaning between languages, which consists of comprehension and representation. In the course of both stages, context is indispensable to the accuracy of language meaning. An isolated word often means nothing and it is often difficult to grasp the actual meaning of a sentence without context. In the past, attention was usually paid to the linguistic problems of the language, but now, more and more emphasis is put on the context. The British linguist Firth points out, "Each word when used in a new context is a new word", which means that meanings of words are conditioned and influenced to a great extent by the context. So the research on context is of particular importance to translation theory as well as translation activities.This thesis is divided into five chapters.Chapter One touches upon the general aspects of context theory, including review of the studies of context, its definition, classification and functions.Chapter Two is the transference from Chapter one to the body of the thesis. It deals with the importance of context to translation, both at the stage of comprehension and at the stage of representation. Without a deep, correct and adequate understanding of the context, mistranslation would be unavoidable.Chapters Three, Four and Five contribute respectively to the three kinds of context and translation strategies. They are linguistic, situational and cultural contexts. Chapter Three is to discuss linguistic context and translation related toit. It is divided into context of phonetics, phrase and sentence. Since ambiguity is often seen in the language use, translation measures about it is also discussed in this chapter.Chapter Four and Chapter Five are the main body of the thesis. In Chapter Four, Halliday's theory of register is applied to the classification of situational context. Halliday thinks that the language use is influenced by three factors of situational context, i.e. field, mode, and tenor, which are generally called register varieties. As to the field, four typical examples are illustrated, i.e. literary English, English for science and technology, journalistic English, and legal English. Mode is mainly divided into speaking and writing, though there are still more detailed division. And tenor is a continuum from frozen style to intimate style. After the discussion of their respective characteristics, translation measures are offered accordingly.At the beginning of Chapter Five, the relationship between culture and translation is discussed. The degree of cultural development will influence the scale of translation activities, and on the other hand, translation activities will propel the communication and development between different cultures. The difference between cultures will certainly cause problems in translation, and this thesis has introduced five cultural translation models, i.e. the go-ahead model, the integration model, the annotation model, the adaptation model and the block model.In practical translation activities, these three kinds of context are linkedclosely with each other. There is no discourse existing only in one kind of context, but cultural context is the most magnificent and the most difficult to master. To be a successful translator, bilingual ability is far from enough, and bicultural knowledge is also badly needed. In general, the importance of context to translation should attract every translator's attention.