A Study On Literary Translation From Perspective Of Communicative Context Adaptation Theory

Since Polish Anthropologist Malinowski puts forth the concept of context of situation in 1923, context has become a key notion in pragmatic theories. In recent years more and more linguists began to give serious considerations and made great contributions to the research of context. Following the contextual correlates of adaptability theory of Jef. Verschueren (2000), this thesis is a discussion of the application of communicative context adaptation theory to translation studies and practice.At the beginning of the thesis the author makes clear the problem of context, i.e. the previous studies of oversea scholars and Chinese scholars on context. Also the author makes a very specific study of several key concepts in Verschueren's theory of adaptation and points out the basic theory of the thesis—communicative context adaptation. Then this thesis deals with the relationship between communicative context adaptation and translation and proves that the theory can be applied to the literary translation.From the point of view of communicative context adaptation theory (mental world, social world and physical world) this thesis explores the applications of communicative context to literary translation through analyzing various literary translation examples, including religions, personalities, social custom and kinship, etc. At last the author discusses two enlightenments of the theory on literary translation. Namely in the image and style translating, the translators should have accurate assessment for communicative context of original language reader and target language to try to reduce the differences between two languages.Verschueren understands and elucidates pragmatics from a totally new point of view. This thesis tentatively intends to introduce communicative adaptation theory to literary translation in order to widen the scope of translation study. In the process of translation, the target language chosen by the translators should adapt to the communicative context of source language. At the same time the translators should assess the mental world, social world and physical world correctly and manipulate and build a new context to make the translation reader get the similar interpretation with source language reader.