Study Of Non-linguistic Context Translation

Just as the term implies, context refers to the environment in which language is used, which plays an important role in meaning determination during communnicating. Context study gradually aroused the concern of linguists, philosophers, even psychologists since the term"context"was put forward by the great Polish-born anthropologist B.Malinowski in 1923. Although the scholars in their related fields studied context from different angles of vision, they all realized its great importance during communicating, and it can be categorized into linguistic context and non-linguistic context based on their studies. Translation is, to some extent, a cross-language and cross-culture communicative activity, its process involves comprehension and expression, a process in which translator must put context into an overall consideration, especially the non-linguistic one in order to thoroughly understand and determine the original meaning of a work, and then to exactly convey the author's original intention.This thesis will discuss translation from the perspective of non-linguistic context on the basis of the previous achievements scored by those scholars. It attempts to arouse translators'attention to context in the course of translation, the great importance that non-linguistic context carries in particular. A translator must read the author's mind and heart before he / she can make a comprehensive understanding of the meaning that the author intends to express through a work and only with this job done as a prerequisite can a translator produce faithful, fluent, elegant translated version. A few translations of Tess of the D'Urbervilles (here after referred as Tess), inclusive of Mr.Zhang Guruo's, are put to use as the source of language materials in this dissertation, and with the philosophized thinking as its basis and by means of a contrastive analysis of the samples collected from various translations of Tess, it intends to make it outstanding what Mr. Zhang Guruo has excelled in dealing non-linguistic context in his Chinese version of Tess. In this study, quite a few translation models set by Mr. Zhang Guruo are used to elaborate his down-to-the-last-detail research on all the non-linguistic context in the novel, such as the feelings and writing motivation of the author, the traits and cultural cultivation of the characters, and the cultural background in which the story of Tess is narrated, and so on. All in all, Mr. Zhang Guruo's comprehensive consideration of the above-stated factors has attested that he has attached great importance to the non-linguistic context in doing translation. That is what we should learn from him in our own translating practice.This thesis consists of five parts:Chapter one points out the great importance of context study during translating as well as elaborates the motivation, significance, aim and the research approach of this thesis.Chapter two introduces the studies on context at home and abroad, past and present, then clarifies the research perspective of this thesis: studying translation from the perspective of non-linguistic context.Chapter three presents the definition and classification of context, and expounds the relationship between non-linguistic context and translation.Chapter four illustrates the great importance of non-linguistic context during translating, especially in literary translation. Through using comparative analysis of the selected three or four translated versions of Tess and employing a lot of examples, this part proves the important role of non-linguistic context, like social context, cultural context and cognitive context, etc, during translating and the classical translated version of Mr. Zhang.Chapter five summarizes the view of this thesis and points out what should be further studied in the future. Context, especially non-linguistic factors play important role in translation. Mr. Zhang's version is regarded as the classical one because he has taken full consideration to the great important role of non-linguistic context during translating, and it is worth for us to study. As for the subtle differences between non-linguistic context and extra-linguistic context, and some definition of the non-linguistic context, this thesis failed to provide explicit explanation, the author will gradually perfect these defects in the following study.All in all, during translating, especially literary translation, we should attach great importance to the non-linguistic context. Mr. Zhang has set us a good example in this regard, since he has taken several aspects of non-linguistic context into consideration, such as the author's feelings and writing motivation, the traits and cultivation of the characters, and the cultural background in which the story of Tess is narrated, and so on. These translation skills and experience, we believe, will have a certain guiding effect on our translating practice.