The Contextualization Of Translation

Translation is translating meaning, and meaning is restricted by context;therefore, it is necessary to handle translating in context. Regretfully, this logically tight syllogism has not been duly recognized. Among the many causes, the fundamental one is believed to be the fact that man's academic vision and academic context have inevitably limited one's understanding of translation.The Chinese translation theory originated from Chinese classic literary theory and aesthetics, which have left an indelible mark on Chinese theoretical thinking of translation. Western translation theory finds its origin in classic Greek and Roman literary theory and aesthetics as well as in Bible hermeneutics, which accounts for its aesthetic and hermeneutic characteristics at its early stage. However, the two traditions diverged in later development. The Western translation theory experienced a linguistic analytic upsurge under the influence of the linguistic turn of Western philosophy, which was later pushed forward wave upon wave in functionalism, the culture turn, deconstructionism etc., forming one ism after another in translation studies (TS). On the contrary, the Chinese tradition kept lingering on the literary aesthetic thinking until about the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the Western TS thoughts were imported one after another by those who were thoughtfully opening their eyes toward the West. As a result, there came increasing critical voices in the Chinese TS community.A brief survey of translation history and translation studies both at home and abroad can easily silhouette a marginalized common ground of our discourse, that is, the context. We undoubtedly turn to the context, linguistic and nonlinguistic, for resolution of whatever translation problems such as diction, cohesion, coherence, etc. whenever they occur.Translation theories both at home and abroad have been abiding by one or another of the contextual factors with penetrating truth in this or that aspect of translation. The literal school of translation concentrates on the linguistic features ofthe source text, striving for equivalent linguistic structures in the target culture;whereas the liberal school takes a modest attitude toward the linguistic equivalents approximate to the source text and pays considerable attention to the contexts (including linguistic, situational, and cultural, contexts as well) of each word, seeking for equivalent meaning instead of similar linguistic structures. The advocators of foreignization favor the source culture and firmly hold the idea that the exotic flavor of the source text should be maintained;while those of domestication share sympathy with the target readers' reception and strive for idiomatic target expressions in the reproduction of the source meaning. It is out of question that each of these points of view has its own context of discourse, which is believed to be the context of their being.But the extensiveness of context itself is ignored, so is its study, which is of great necessity to be improved in the scientific formulation of a theory of communication and translation. The study of the context is the foundation of all scientific conceptualization. With this understanding, I have concentrated on the basic state of being in translation and fixed my eyes on the translation context, trying to interpret translation in its translation context and propose a context theory of translation.I have approached the problem of the translation context from a macro-historical perspective with dialectical and philosophical thinking. My argument falls into five chapters in addition to an introduction and a conclusion. The problem of the translation context is proposed in the introduction, analyzed and verified in the following five chapters, and finally briefly concluded with a prospect of further study on the translation context.Chapter 1 is a survey of the context theory in Western linguistics and philosophy of language. The context theory in the West has developed since Aristotle from a narrow scope study to an interdisciplinary investigation, manifesting four distinctive stages of evolution, featuring respectively (1) the study of the linguistic context, (2) the study of the context of situation, (3) the study of the context of culture, and (4) the interdisciplinary study of context. The survey shows that scholars in the West have increasingly realized the importance of context in language use as well as in theirstudy of linguistics. It also highlights the interdisciplinary nature of the study of context, which attracts scholars from such fields as anthropology, sociology, sociolinguistics, psychology, psycholinguistics, cognitive linguistics, computer science and artificial intelligence as well. The study of context in the West is becoming an independent field of interdisciplinary academic research.Chapter 2 seeks to shape a historical systemic view of context from synchronic and diachronic perspectives. Synchronic and diachronic study of context proves that context is systemic, hierarchical, and dynamic, with circled layers of context extending from the context of langue, to the context of parole, to the context of situation, and finally to the context of culture, the former two forming the linguistic context and the latter two the nonlinguistic context. All factors of context are interrelated, and the linguistic context is affected by the nonlinguistic context on the basis of human cognition of both the objective and the subjective world. Therefore, the nonlinguistic context takes the lead in the evolution of the whole context in time and in space, resulting in a ceaselessly expanding sphere around language. A sphere is the characteristic shape of context as a whole, which expands while cycling with the passing of time, just like an imaginary snowball rolling and growing all the time.Chapters 3, 4, and 5, which form the main body of this thesis, center around the context of translation, with a view to formulating a context theory of translation.Chapter 3 addresses the omnipresent restriction of context on translation from the perspective of communication theory by classifying human communication into three major types, namely, (1) intralingual/cultural communication, (2) direct interlingual/cultural communication, and (3) indirect interlingual/cultural communication, the last of which is translation. Analyses show that the degree of contextual restriction and the difficulty of the fusion of horizon between participants in communication increase progressively from intralingual/cultural communication, through direct interlingual/cultural communication, to indirect interlingual/cultural communication. TS theorists in both China and the West, especially in the West, have noticed this phenomenon and made extensive research into the restriction of context on translation, as is shown in the brief survey of research in this respect both at homeand abroad. The concern with the translation context is indicating a new trend in translation studies.Chapter 4 discusses the definition, composition, and essential features of the translation context and proposed a time-space distance model of the translation context. The translation context is defined in this thesis as the sum of linguistic and cultural interactions brought onto the translation desk by the translator. Like the context of ordinary language use, it consists of four hierarchical layers of contexts, i.e., the context of langue, the context of parole, the context of situation, and the context of culture. It involves both the source language/culture and the target language/culture, and even the language/culture of the translator when he comes from a language community other than the source and the target languages. With the enlightenment from R. Daniel Shaw's cultural distance model of the translation context, I proceed to formulate a time-space distance model of translation context which is a sphere marked with longitude and latitude lines. This model, which locates each translator on a specific point on the sphere in relation to all linguistic, situational, and cultural factors, is intended as a universal model for the explanation of translation and translation theory in history.The time-space of the translation context is natural as well as social, the former referring to the natural cycling of the earth and its geographic settings, and the latter referring to the development of human society and its hierarchical organization of social groups. From these two perspectives of the time-space, we can more easily understand the mechanics of the translation context and the dynamic nature of translation. A conclusion of the nature of translation is made at the end of this chapter that translation is an unfinalized dialogue between all different perspectives on the sphere of the translation context, which is motivated by the time-space difference among the different translation contexts on the sphere, and that translation is a ceaseless sense-making contextualization of the source text in other languages and cultures.Chapter 5 discusses the basic types of the translation dialogue from synchronic and diachronic perspectives, dividing each into two major types. The synchronictranslation dialogue involves (1) the dialogue between relevant contextual factors in the specific reproduction of a source text in a specific period of time, and (2) the dialogue between different versions of the same source text produced by different translators in a specific period of time;whereas the diachronic translation dialogue falls into (1) the dialogue between different contextual factors in the linear sequence of 4he text, and (2) the dialogue between different versions of the same source text created in different periods of time. The dialogics of translation should be studied from both the natural and social perspectives of time-space, taking into consideration all the relevant contextual factors in langue, parole, situation and culture as well. The translation dialogue presents itself, more or less, in the translation of all text types, depending on the number of contextual factors involved, the most heated dialogue being in literary translation, especially in poetry translation. Therefore, I cite some examples of poetry translation in this chapter to illustrate the synchronic and the diachronic dialogues in translating, attempting to explain how the translation context is formed in a specific translating activity and how the translation dialogue helps shape and develop the target version(s) of a source text, intending to test the universal adaptability of the proposed time-space distance model of the translation context.Finally, we concluded by emphasizing that all definiteness and indefiniteness, translatability and intranslatability originate in man's state of being and his cognition of this state of being. The basic state of being for translation is the translation context, which is simply an expanded or enlarged form of the ordinary context, involving communication across languages and cultures. Translation is essentially a ceaseless sense-making contextualization of the source text in this expanded context of communication. A scientific understanding of translation may be based on man's state of being, which is at the core of the contextualization of translation.