The Influences Of Situational Context And Cultural Context On English-Chinese Translation-A Case Study Of Fu Donghua's Translation Of Gone With The Wind

Translation occurs within specific social circumstances and cultures, so contexts have a great influence on the translating activities. Though many studies have been done on the situational context and cultural context, few have been done on the relationship between translation and those contexts. This thesis aims to explore the influence situational context and cultural context have on English-Chinese translation. It focuses on a case study of the translation of Gone, with the Wind by Mr. Fu Donghua. Fu Donghua's version boasts a distinct feature which attracts much attention.Situational context and cultural context have a profound impact on translating activities. Situational context determines translators'choice of ideational meaning of words in order to express the information precisely. It also plays an important role in manifesting characters'status,identity, temperament and interpersonal relations, so the translator should choose the appropriate expression to fit the expectation of readers for the roles. It settles down the medium to convey information, so translators have to choose a proper style of language. Cultural context reflects the features of clothing,food, necessities, names of people and places,politics, religion, literature,convention,culture-loaded words,and idioms in different cultures. Translation is not only the transform of one language to another but also entails the process of cultural de-coding, re-coding and en-coding. Cultural context is important to the understanding of original texts. Fu Donghua emphasized fluency and idiomaticity in his translating, so he translated the text freely with a preference for those culturally familiar expressions. As for some exotic expressions which could not be translated directly, he added annotations to explain. Translation is a confrontation of two cultures, and both source language and target language cultural systems have their own features. Faced with this, a translator should take pains to select the proper expression, technique and strategy according to different social circumstances, acceptability of readers and different translating purposes.On the other hand, cultural context and situational context are complementary to each other. To some extent, they are the same thing from two different depths of observation. Culture is the indirect context while situation is the direct context. Text has close connection with not only the immediate situational context, but also the overall cultural background.The thesis consists of five parts. Chapter one is an introduction which introduces the significance, the objectives and the organization of the thesis.Chapter two is a literature review on the definition and classification of situational and cultural contexts. Chapter three discusses examples from Fu Donghua's translation of Gone with the Wind in terms of situational context. Chapter four discusses examples in the light of cultural context. Chapter Five draws a conclusion to the whole thesis, analyzing influences of situational and cultural context on translation as well as the translation strategies used by translators.The author hopes the thesis would help translators to improve the quality of their translations by paying more attention to the effects of contexts.