Hierarchical Nature Of Context And Its Influence On Translation

Language environment can be simply described as context. Nowadays, the applied study of context has penetrated into various fields, including translation. Although context has been intensively studied for many years, the study is unsystematic. There are still many important theoretical and practical problems remaining unsolved. For instance, there are different views on the definition and classification of context; moreover, most scholars develop their definitions and classifications of context from an equal plane, with little attention to the hierarchical nature of contextual factors. Therefore, the research questions to be addressed in this paper are the following: What is context? How do we classify context? What are the different functions of different contextual factors at different levels in interpreting and expressing language events? In this paper, on the basis of a general study of the research of many scholars, the author attempts to provide her definition and classification of context to answer the above questions. The findings are as follows: context includes all direct as well as indirect factors that influence the production and interpretation of utterances; it can be classified into linguistic context, situational context and cultural context; context enjoys a hierarchical nature, the more senior the contexts are, the more obscure they are and the more influence they have on interpretation and expression of language events.This paper introduces the hierarchical nature of context into the process of translation and adopts the " functional equivalence" as the criterion of translation. By providing many examples and making comparative studies, the author uses a qualitative research method to analyze respective functions of linguistic context, situational context and cultural context in interpreting source language and expressing target language. Finally, a conclusion is drawn that translation is restricted andinfluenced by different contexts; different contexts exert different functions in interpreting and expressing language; the more senior the contexts are, the more obscure they are and the more influence they have on translation.The study theoretically tries to widen the discussion of context studies and to better understand the correlation between context studies and translation theory and practically enhances translators' attention to contextual factors, especially obscure contextual factors in translating, thus reducing mistranslation or avoiding " translationese" in translation practice.