Functions Of Context In Achieving Validity In Interpretation

As an important bond in intercultural communications, interpretation is playing amore and more significant role in the development of the society. It serves as a bridgefrom political consultations, business negotiations to tourism and person-to-personexchanges. Therefore, scholars from home and abroad attach great importance to thestudies of interpretation. Initially, theoretical guidance was established ininterpretation studies. Then, academic studies were conducted in the principles ofpsychology, sociology and epistemology. And recently, probe into interpretation iscomprehensive and diversified through interdisciplinary studies.Scholars from home and abroad have put forward varied criteria forinterpretation, primarily focusing on “faithfulness”,“promptness”, and “transmissionof meaning”. It is Zhao Yanchun who first established a linkage between “validity”and “interpretation” with a formula “interpretation=convergence/divergence”. Thehigher the degree of convergence or the lower the degree of divergence, the higherinterpretation validity, the lower the degree of convergence or the higher the degree ofdivergence, the lower interpretation validity. Thenceforth,“validity” is recognized asa standard judging whether an interpretation task is ideally completed. With theachievement of communicative validity as an objective in interpretation, this thesiselaborates the functions of context in diverse categories, namely linguistic context (atlexical, syntactic and semantic level) and non-linguistic context (social background,mental factors and physical elements), trying to analyze the role context plays incommunicating speaker’s intentions.