The Constraints Of Cultural Context On Technical Translation

EST (English for Science and Technology) is a specific style of English widely used in scientific and technical fields. Science and technology have drawn much attention of the whole country since the late 1970's when China started its reform and opening-up. EST and its translation play a significant role in the course of learning new science and advanced technology from foreign countries, and of introducing the situation in China to the outside world as well. To date, however, there have been many problems in EST translation. For instance, some translations are ambiguous and hard to understand, and mistakes and omissions in target text are common. The study on EST translation mainly concentrates on concrete translation methods and standards, including superficial linguistic facts such as translation of terminology, the processing of grammar and so on, while little attention has been paid to in-depth research.Scholars both at home and abroad have got a great research result that context has important constraints on translation. Inevitably, EST translation is bound to be restricted and influenced by context as well, and especially the study on cultural context takes the research on context to a new theoretical level. But so far, few people have paid attention to this research.Some scholars believe that it is not necessary to apply research on cultural context to EST translation because EST is characterized by clear statements, accurate theories and especially non-cultural property. In fact, all types of context, including cultural context, play quite important roles in the process of EST translation. This paper begins with the conceptions of context and cultural context, and then analyzes some different cultural factors that influence EST translation, including different ecological cultures, customs, historical cultures, religious, cultural prepositions, cultural-loaded expressions, material cultures and language cultures between English-speaking countries and China. The necessity, feasibility and significance of researching EST from the perspective of cultural context are also highlighted.The research is significant both theoretically and practically. This paper not only expands the fields of context research and enriches especially EST translation theory, but also improves the quality of EST translation and provides enlightenment to translators and English teaching. However, it is a new approach to probe into EST translation into Chinese from the perspective of cultural context. Anyway, the author hopes heartily that it will provide a new field of vision of EST translation study, promote people's cognition of the essence of EST and thus improving the technical communications more effectively.