Translation Of High-context Words From A Dual Perspective Of Skopos And Functional Equivalence Theories

Thomas Pynchon’s novels usually narrate themselves under high context; therefore, high context words frequent his writing and how to properly render them becomes a major obstacle for translators to surmount. From the angle of context, this thesis probes into this issue within three segments, i.e., absence of context information, retaining context information and the adjustment of context information, and it first settles the definition of high context words, and then illustrates under the guidance of functional equivalence and skopos theories several specific translation methods, attempting to summarize some feasible translation skills and strategies for high-context words.Nida holds in his functional equivalence translation theory that translation should attain the goal of information and functional equivalence of the original text. Therefore, when dealing with the translation of high-context words, translators shall make proper adjustments to the high-context words in the target text to retain the embodied context information or compensate the loss, and demonstrate it to the target readers.Skopos theory holds that the target text shall achieve the expected function of the source text. Therefore, when dealing with the translation of high-context words, translators shall take the expected function of the source text into consideration, restore the concealed context information by utilizing specific translation strategies like paraphrase and amplification, and transform the high-context words into low-context ones or information.