A Study On Chinese Translation Of African American English In Gone With The Wind From The Perspective Of Cognitive Context

Cognitive context is an important branch of relevance theory.It has four qualities,namely,selection,dynamic,gestalt and subjectivity.Cognitive context takes subjectivity as a core with full participation of selection,dynamic and gestalt to construct a context.Among these four qualities,subjectivity is the source power to move forward the development of practical translation in cognitive context.The translator will select relevant encyclopedia and experience knowledge according to context,and such knowledge becomes the foundation for constructing translation context.In the interaction of source-text context and translated-text context,the translator finds a balance point among these four qualities to carry out the translation.Cognitive context taking subjectivity as the core with the other three involved,the author decides to examine and study the AAE's features covering phonetic,words,sentential components and grammatical information in Gone with the Wind in a comprehensive method from point to surface,from parts to wholes,and carries out relevant strategy for translation.Under the instruction of subconscious subjectivity,the translator first considers phonetic translation and chooses selection as the theoretical tool for that,because the translator needs to select Chinese phonetic symbol that matches AAE at its best.Selecting Chinese words is dynamic in the informational match-up between source-text context and translated-text context.To accurately interpret concrete AAE words,sentential components and grammatical information in source-text context,the translator will select their counterparts in Chinese so as to promote mutually dynamic development of source-text context and translated-text context.Although subjectivity goes through the whole translated-text context and plays leading role.It's still abstract and makes itself concrete in the process of interpreting out the translation of sentential components,grammatical information from source-text context to translated-text context.The translator plays the role of subjectivity in source-text context and translated-text context;as selecting phonetic translation information,the translator makes interactive comparison between source-text context and translated-text context and deeply analyzes sentential components and grammatical information so as to decide words that can match in translated-text context.The translator,according to translated-text context,finds sentential components and grammatical information that reach the best matching effect in translating and produces translation with integrative meaning to ensure the gestalt of translated-text context.This thesis studies two Chinese versions of Gone with the Wind respectively by Li Meihua and Huang Jianren and finds out that Li's is more understandable while Huang's is mentally closer to the community of target language.In translating phonetic,words,sentential components and grammatical information,these two versions choose regular Chinese expressions,not translating out the AAE's features,which makes translated text lack of originality.The author,through the analysis of translation examples,decides to translate African American English(AAE)in Cantonese,because Cantonese is regarded as the mainstream language for American Chinese to communicate.Like AAE,Cantonese,as a foreign language in the United States,has a comparatively large speaking population and many features.Cantonese and AAE both are native to the Southern environment in which they are gestated,apart from their similarity in language features,so they share similarity in southern language culture.