The Dynamic Adaptation Of Context In Translating Process

The present research sheds lights on dynamic contextual adaptation in the translating process from a pragmatic perspective of Adaptation Theory. On the basis of Verschueren's Adaptation Theory and a close and conscientious examination of collected data, this research has tentatively developed and cultivated a theoretic and analytic framework to investigate the workings of the translator's mind---A Contextual Adaptation Approach to the Translating Process. It intends to approach the dynamics of the translating process by giving an account of how the information-processing faculties of the translator's mind enable him to carry on cross-cultural communication with the original producer and his target reader. The domain of this research is the translator's mental faculties and it is the aim of this study to explore the possibilities in terms of the translator's communicative competence assumed to be part of the human minds. The tentative framework we have put forward is to account for aspects of the translating process. The paradigm"A Contextual Adaptation Approach to the Translating Process"may be of significance both in theory and practice. Theoretically, this paradigm describes how the translator's mind works in the translating process, offering a new point of view to the translation circle. Practically, this approach may offer some guidance to translation teaching. It helps the students have a new idea of the translating process from the angle of pragmatics: it is a dynamically intention-interpreting and context-adapting process in which the translator makes every effort to ensure the cognitive consonance, acceptability level and contextual effect resonance of his target readers.From this point of view, we perceive the translating process as the workings of the translator's utilization of context as a gear for the dynamic regulation of adaptation between the original discourse in one language and the target discourse in another language. In terms of this, we postulate that the whole translating process consists of Context Construal in Discourse Interpretation (CCDI, hereafter), Context Reconstruction in Discourse Reproduction (CRDR, hereafter), and Dynamic Regulation of Adaptation (DRA, hereafter) in both CCDI and CRDR. By the former process, we mean, an inter-cultural adaptable mental interaction between the translator and the author in light of context construal. By the latter process, we mean, an intra-cultrual adaptable mental manipulation and representation of the translator's interpretation of the original discourse towards the intended target audience. Whereas what is indispensable in the above two processes is what we define as Dynamic Regulation of Adaptation, or DRA for short, in our terminology. It is for this aspect that we have reserved a special function, the operator, which could intervene and interfere in the two processes of Context Construal in Discourse Interpretation (CCDI) and Context Reconstruction in Discourse Reproduction. The interrelations and interactions of these factors will demarcate the well-produced version of translation.Translation is a continuous dynamic-adapting process from the source language to the target language, which are characterized by variability, negotiability, and adaptability. In the course of translating, the translator develops his subjectivity when he interprets the original utterance as a reader and researcher, and regenerates them through context reconstruction in the reproduced discourse as recreator and mediator. In this process, the translator's attitudes towards his translation task should be that conveying as far as possible the original producer's intentions as well as his manipulation of the latter's informative intention must be predicted on the ensuring of the cognitive and aesthetic consonance or resonance of the target reader. The translator's linguistic choices and pragmatic translation strategies must focus on conveying the original producer's intentions without putting the audience to unnecessary processing efforts in achieving the contextual effects in the interpretation intended by the original producer. The choices and strategies should also achieve the similar contextual effects in the interpretation of the original producer's informative intention manipulatively reconstructed by the translator to cater to the aesthetic expectations and acceptability level of the target reader. The interaction and interdependency of dynamic contextual adaptation and translation strategies are also investigated in the several parts of the thesis. Based on our theoretical deduction and data analysis, the various parameters, features, or ingredients in the dynamics of translating process: variability, negotiability, adaptability, cohesion, intertextuality, sequencing, the mental world, the social world, and the physical world are tentatively cultivated and the interrelationship between them is expounded in detail.