A Study On The Significance Of Context To Text Translation

Translation is a complex language communicative activity which takes place within a social context. Text is a set of signals transmitted through some medium from a sender to a receiver in a particular code or set of codes. A text is a closed and self-sufficient entity. Text is the object of translation. Context is the important element that influences text translation. In the field of modern linguistics, the position of context is becoming more and more important. Many branches of linguistics, such as sociolinguistics, rhetorics, pragmatics and semantics, all take context as an important topic to study. In the field of translation, context has become the focus of translators and translation theorists in our country. But most of them have only studied a certain specific problem or aspect, or certain elements that influence context. This dissertation studies the significance of context to text translation from the three dimensions of context: the communicative dimension of context, the pragmatic dimension of context and the semiotic dimension of context. This dissertation is developed in six chapters.Chapter one is the introductory part, which reveals the significance of the study as well as aims in writing this dissertation. Chapter two is about the theoretic background of the study on context. In the first part of this chapter the author presents a retrospect of the development of the theory of context. In the second part of this chapter the author presents the classification of contextual elements involved in translation.Chapter three deals with the significance of context to text translation from the communicative dimension of context. Any text emerges in a certain situation of context. People use different variations of language in different communicative situations. So what the communicative dimension of context studies is different variations of language in context. Variation in language use can be approached from two dimensions: one is user-related varieties which are called dialects and the other is use-related varieties which are called registers. The first part of this chapter studies dialects and the significance of context to text translation. The second part of this chapter studies registers and the significance of context to text translation. Chapter four deals with the significance of context to text translation from the pragmatic dimension of context. The pragmatic dimension of context builds into the analysis values relating to the ability to 'do things with words'. Equivalence is not just linguistic and semantic; it is also pragmatic. We can establish pragmatic equivalence only by considering what utterances count as in context. The first part of this chapter studies the speech act and the significance of context to text translation. The second part of this chapter studies conversational implicatures and the significance of context to text translation. The third part of this chapter studies the politeness principle and the significance of context to text translation.Chapter five deals with the significance of context to text translation from the semiotic dimension of context. Semiotics is the science that studies sign systems. Translation involves source language and target language,it is a semiotic transformation. The semiotic dimension of context regulates the interaction of the various discoursal elements as 'signs'. It is only through this interactive semiotic dimension that language users can begin to do things with words, and values such as those of field, mode and tenor begin to play a genuine role in communicative transactions. In the first part of this chapter the author studies the significance of context in the transfer of referential meaning. In the second part of this chapter the author studies the significance of context in the transfer of pragmatic meaning. In the third part of this chapter the author studies the significance of context in the transfer of linguistic meaning.Chapter six serves as a conclusion of this dissertation.