Choice Of Contextual Meaning In Dialogue Translation In Novels

This report is based on the translation of Chapters Three to Six of the novel The Marriage Lie,whose author is an American female novelist named Kimberly Bell.It tells a lie between Will(husband)and Iris(wife)revealed in an airplane crash.As there are many dialogues in this novel,the quality of dialogue translation,to a great extent,influences the completeness and readability of the whole translation.Dialogues involve different contexts that include linguistic context and non-linguistic context.In translating dialogues,translators have to take contexts into consideration.As Nida puts it,translating means translating meaning.In dialogue translation,translators should translate the speaker meaning in context.Namely,dialogue translation should be based on contextual meaning.On the one hand,contextual meaning refers to the meaning of words in specific linguistic context.On the other hand,it means the meaning determined by the situation or function in a specific social environment.Choosing the correct and accurate contextual meaning can not only offer a comfortable translation experience to the translators but also provide the target-text readers with a similar reading experience to that of source-text readers.Therefore,translators should conduct an in-depth analysis of dialogues,and on the basis of understanding the literal meaning,choose the correct and accurate contextual meaning through contextual analysis.Through this translation practice,the Author of this report deeply understands the importance of choosing accurate contextual meaning in dialogue translation in novels.For one thing,the Author hopes to improve his translating competence,especially translating skills of dialogue,through translation practices.For another,the Author expects,through the case study on difficulties in this translation practice,to accumulate experience for future translation practices and provide references for other translators.