Translating Allusions From The Perspective Of Dynamic Adaptation To Cultural Context

It is well-known that allusions, as embedded in specific cultures, have rich cultural connotations, and each allusion has its historical and cultural backgrounds or sources. It is quite clear that the purpose of using allusions either in literary or nonliterary texts is to convey the connotative (or metaphorical ) meaning on the denotative (or surface) level of discourse. How to convey the implicity and implicature of the allusion in the source culture and how to preserve its cultural flavor as much as possible are two important issues in translating allusions. At present, the definition of allusion is not quite clear. Based on Great Chinese Allusion Dictionary (2005), allusions are divided into two categories: one is Story Allusion, which originates from a story; the other is Word Allusion, which refers to the words that have provenance. Comparatively to Story Allusions, the definition of word allusions is ambiguous. The allusions discussed in the thesis are mainly about Story Allusions. Nowadays, the studies of translating allusions are mainly in the perspective of cross-cultural translation, but seldom are from the angle of dynamic adaptation to context. The thesis just aims to do the research of translating allusions in cultural context and illustrate prolific examples from the two versions of Hong Loumeng.Because cultural context is one of the major factors affecting the meaning of words, a word may assume distinctive meaning in different cultural contexts. The theory of dynamic adaptation to context ---- a new pragmatic perspective, may support the author in finishing doing the research of translating allusions. We hope that it may make some contributions to the solution of conveying cultural implicature in translation studies. The conclusion of the thesis is that in the process of translating allusions, we should choose proper translation strategies and linguistic forms according to different cultural context. That is, dynamic adaptation to cultural context decides whether the cultural implicature of the ST should be conveyed or not, and how to convey it.