A Study Of Catford’s Thoughts On The Relationship Between Context And Translation

Catford is one of the pioneers of liguistic school in translation studies, and the first toapply context to translation. Numerous researches concerning Catford have been conducted,but the researches are restricted to his theory of translation shifts, translation equivalence orthe limits of translatability, with his thoughts of context and translation left out. WhatCatford‘s theory of context is like and how context works in translation process according tohis translation theory still remain to be answered. Therefore, a study on those two questions isnecessary.The thesis discusses Catford‘s thoughts of context and translation from three majoraspects: Catford‘s thoughts of context, his theoretical understanding of context and translation,and an evaluation. First, it explores the definition, classification, source, nature and features aswell as some ambiguous terms in Catford‘s theory of context by adopting a methodology ofdescription, literature research and qualitative research. Secondly, it probes into Catford‘stheoretical understanding of context and translation mainly employing description andqualitative research. The probe involves his general understanding of the relationship ofcontext to the establishment of translation equivalents, the building-up or transference ofmeaning and the limits of translatability, and involves setting up Catford‘s model of howcontext works specifically in translation process. The model consists of two major procedures:forming the community of substance and establishing translation equivalents. For establishingtranslation equivalents, there are three sub-procedures: matching for equivalents, reorganizingfor equivalents and creating―equivalents‖, in which context‘s operation is investigated atdifferent levels of language and in different language varieties. Thirdly, the thesis evaluatesCatford‘s thoughts of context and translation with a qualitative-research method. Theevaluation reveals the merits in his approach to translation studies and translation assessment,in his classification of translation and untranslatability, and in his pioneering study oftranslation shifts. Also, it uncovers some drawbacks in his theory of context, such as thelimitation to static and pre-existing property, the exclusion of psychological elements, and drawbacks in his theory of translation in context, like the overlook of subjective factors andthe uncertainty in achieving translation equivalence. Finally, the thesis concludes Catford‘scontext possesses its unique characteristics and plays a vital role in Catford‘s theory oftranslation and that he had the inclination to advocate translating in context, similar tocontextualization of translation nowadays.By undertaking a thorough exploration into the long-overlooked field—the thoughts ofcontext and translation of Catford, the first to have studied translation in the perspective ofcontext, the thesis has found that Catford‘s context, having its unique definition, source,nature and features, consists of co-text and context of situation, and in translation process,context works indispensably at various levels of language and in different language varieties,forming Catford‘s model of translation in context. Such an exploration not only brings to lightthe pioneer‘s thoughts of context and translation, but adds to the integrity of the researches onCatford, which contributes to an objective and comprehensive cognition of Catford‘s theory.Besides, the findings of the research may provide inspirations to scholars in the field ofcontext and translation, which would push the advance of both context studies and translationstudies. What‘s more, some discoveries in the research, such as Catford‘s employment ofstatistics in discussing translation equivalents and his tendency to forming―translationalgorithms‖for machine translation, would make contributions to the development ofcorpus-based translation study and machine translation.