A Comparative Study Of Two Chinese Versions Of The Scarlet Letter From The Perspective Of Context Theory

Nathaniel Hawthorne, the great literary genius in American literature, earns his reputation mostly from his work The Scarlet Letter, which has aroused century-long concerns and criticism in the field of literary circles since its publication. As an undisputed masterpiece of world literature, it has been interpreted from various perspectives like feminism, psychological analysis and symbolism. Nevertheless, the research on the Chinese translations of The Scarlet Letter is, comparatively speaking, far from being satisfactory and thus need to be further perfected.Context, originally proposed by Malinowski, refers to the environment in which meanings are exchanged, including linguistic context, situational context and cultural context. As an important concept in linguistics, context has played significant role in understanding a given text. In the process of translation, the specific context determines not only proper comprehension of the original but also the appropriate reproduction of the target text. Any slight negligence of the context may inevitably lead to misunderstandings and even mistranslation.Owing to the need for more systematic and comprehensive studies on the Chinese translations of The Scarlet Letter as well as the need to check the reliability of context theory in literary translation evaluation, this thesis, as its title suggests, mainly devotes itself to the Chinese translations of The Scarlet Letter from the aspect of context theory which is put forward by American functional linguist, M.A.K.Halliday. Through detailed comparative analysis of two Chinese versions translated by Han Shiheng and Yao Naiqiang from the perspective of linguistic context, situational context and cultural context, the author of this thesis comes to a conclusion that, firstly, the analysis of context in the original can help achieve the accurate interpretation of the original; secondly, context theory, though initially created for linguistic purpose, can be used as a workable guide to decide whether the original is faithfully transferred into target language, that is to say, whether the translated versions are linguistically, situationally and culturally equivalent with its original text; lastly, a good translation should be the one which can vividly transfer the original context and its relevant function.