On The Translation Of Argumentative Essays From The Perspective Of Communicative Context In Adaptation Theory

The present translation report has adopted communicative context in Adaptation Theory by Verschueren,a Belgium linguist and applied such relevant translation techniques as amplification,omission,specification and conversion in the translation of two argumentative essays "What Is Freedom of Conscience" and "What Are We Doing Here" in What Are Here by Marilynne Robinson to solve translation problems caused by significant differences between Chinese and foreign culture.The author has compared and analyzed her original version with the modified version of two essays according to three aspects in communicative context,namely mental world,social world and physical world.With the help of numerous methods and techniques,the author has tried her best to make the target text more precisely convey the original meaning and serve target readers.By analyzing cases,two results have been achieved.For one thing,the mental world,social world and physical world of both the original text and the target text should be focused on when translating argumentative essays,which is an important basis for readers to understand these texts.For another thing,more than one translation method should be employed to present these three different worlds.In mental world,translators can use specification,omission and conversion to adapt the cognition of target readers and ensure that target readers can understand the text;In social world,translators can apply annotated translation and reverse translation to narrow cultural differences,making target readers more deeply comprehend foreign history and culture;In physical world,translators can adopt amplification as well as division and combination to get the chronological and spacial order into shape and clear the structure of long and difficult sentences.Therefore,it is important to choose them flexibly so that the target text can not only conform to the culture of source text and convey the emotions of writers,but also be better accepted by target readers.