A Contextual Study On Translation Critieria

This thesis adopts a dynamic approach to study the relativity of translation criteria from the perspective of context. As translation, in its essence, is the translation of meaning and meaning is determined in its contexts, the study of context is indispensable for translation study. Due to the dynamic characteristic of context, translation criteria, which are used to assess the results of translation, are bound to carry the dynamic feature. Therefore, in the present thesis, the relativity of translation criteria is discussed from two aspects: one is the relative uncertainty of translation criteria; the other is the relative certainty of translation criteria. The traditional studies of translation criteria are mostly carried out from the static approach supposing that contexts are pre-given and keep unchanged during the translation process. However, they are only useful and effective for certain text types in particular contexts. By synthesizing Halliday's"context metafunction hook-up hypothesis"and Sperber and Wilson's"contextual assumption"as the theoretical foundation, the present thesis discusses the relationship between dynamic context and translation criteria, the influences of contexts on translation from three perspectives: linguistic contexts, situational contexts and cultural contexts and the relativity of translation criteria from the perspective of dynamic contexts.Although some scholars have made some translation researches from the angle of context, few of them have carried out systematic and comprehensive studies of the translation criteria from contextual perspective. This paper is a contextual attempt on the study of translation criteria. It not only enriches the previous studies of the translation criteria, giving dynamic characteristic of contexts its deserved position, but also provides a theoretical basis for different versions of translated texts. The author hopes that this paper could cast some light on the study of translation criteria and there would be more studies of translation criteria from this approach in the near future.