Explorations Of Cultural Context And Its Adaptability In Translation

Any linguistic communication cannot go without certain context. The close relationship between context and linguistic communication leads to an important relationship between context and translation that is viewed as a special kind of cross-cultural communication. Cultural context is one of the most important branches in context. Recently, with the prosperity of cross-cultural communication, the influence of cultural context on translation has become more and more predominant and accordingly offers a very significant space for us to explore. Up to now, researches on cultural context are relatively general and rare, let alone the systematic research on cultural context in translation. Besides, domestic scholars usually tend to statically study the influence of cultural context on specific translating practices, such as translating idioms, ad. etc.This thesis firstly reviews the relevant literatures of context and cultural context both abroad and home, on the basis of which, a detailed exploration of classifications of cultural context from three different perspectives is made, i.e. high, popular and deep cultural context from the angle of classification of culture;SL cultural context, TL cultural context and communicator's cultural context from the angle of different stages in translating process;internal and external cultural context from the angle of literary translation. Next, two main functions of cultural context in translation are discussed respectively: the interpretative function of cultural context at the understanding stage of translation which is mainly reflected in two aspects: the function of understanding implications and the function of removing ambiguity;the restrictive function of both the SL and TL cultural contexts at the expressing stage of translation.Through the above analysis, it could be seen clearly that cultural context involved in translation is multi-layer and complicated and plays different roles at different stages of translation. So, as the mediator in thecommunicative process of translation, the translator has to face such an important problem as "how should they properly deal with cultural context in translation", which is the second important research aspect of this thesis. The process of translation is not only a special kind of cross-cultural communication but also a dynamic communication, within which, the involved cultural contexts are not invariable but dynamically change with the development of the communicative process of translation and exert different influences at different stages of translation. This thesis introduces Jef Verschueren's theory of adaptation and let it be the theoretical support to further discuss the dynamic model of cultural contextual adaptation in translation. As the model shows, from the angle of the translator, the process of translation can be viewed as a unity of understanding stage and expressing stage, in which included are five cultural contexts: SL cultural context, SL writer's personal cultural context, translator's personal cultural context, TL cultural context and TL reader's personal cultural context. At the understanding stage of translation, the translator as the reader of the SL text may be influenced by the first three kinds of cultural contexts or certain combinations among the three and dynamically adapt to them for the purpose of achieving the communicative task of correctly understanding the SL text. At the expressing stage of translation, the translator as the writer of the TL rendering may be influenced by the above five kinds of cultural contexts or certain combinations among the five and dynamically adapt to them for the purpose of achieving the communicative task of properly translating. It should be noticed here that dynamics as the core of theory of adaptation is also viewed as the key to the model of cultural contextual adaptation. Translators as mediators in translation play different roles in different stages of translation and consciously or unconsciously make dynamic adaptations to the relevant cultural contexts to accomplish different communicative tasks.