Footnote For English-Chinese Translation From The Communicative Perspective

Many techniques can be employed for translation, and annotation is one of them.Footnote, as one kind of annotation, has gained little attention so far. It is almost a blank inthe studies on footnote for English-Chinese translation from the communicative perspective.However, this is well worth exploring considering its significance for translation practice.This thesis tries to probe into why a footnote is needed, and when and how to make afootnote in English-Chinese translation from the communicative perspective.This thesis begins by introducing the basic concepts of footnote, including its definition,status, design and functions, etc. At the very beginning, footnote is defined as “an extra pieceof information that is printed at the bottom of a page”(ALED,6th), referred to as“translator’s note”, a comment made by the translator, not the original author or the editor.The author goes on to clarify the needs for footnote from three aspects: translator aspect,reader aspect and source text aspect.The author adopts the communication theory, particularly, the ideas of “process school”,one of the representative schools of communication studies, as its fundamental theoreticalframework. Based on the ideas of the “process school”, it puts forward a communicativemodel of footnote-making, which reflects the nature of footnote and its functional process. Ittreats footnote as a communicative system, and footnote-making as a dynamiccommunication process. The value of a footnote consists not only in its information load butin the effectiveness of communicating that information. Translator and reader are twoimportant participants in this model. Translator being the connector and mediator betweenthe original author and the target text reader, his communicative intention, attitude andassessment of the communicative effect are essential considerations when he is making afootnote. This thesis tries to describe the process of footnote-making from thecommunicative perspective by analyzing examples. It depicts four aspects: deciding the typeof footnote, selecting the timing to make a footnote, selecting the elements to be given afootnote, and how to encode a footnote. The thesis concludes by providing four principlesfor footnote-making from the communicative perspective. They are aesthetic principle,concise principle, objective principle and reader-friendly principle.All in all, this thesis tries to give a more in-depth, comprehensive and systematic studyof footnote, for the purpose of formulating unified rules for footnote makers to follow andgiving some insightful suggestions for common translation problems.