Transcript 新编英汉互译教程讲稿

Tasks for today’s lesson
 Check
Exs. 5
 Chapter 6 Context and wording in
Translation (I)
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Chapter 6
Context
and wording in
Translation (I)
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6.1 Towards Context
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The concept of “context” was raised by the
Polish anthropologist B. Malinowski in 1923. It
has drawn wide attention in many fields such as
pragmatics, semantics, logics, anthropological
linguistics, socio-linguistics, psycholinguistics,
applied linguistics, etc.
Scholars have raised various theories concerning
the definition, constitution, classification and
functions of context.
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6.1.1 What is Context
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Hu Zhuanglin (2001: 405-406) introduces Firth’s
theory as follows:
［1］ The internal relations of the text (linguistic
context)
a. the syntagmatic relations between the elements
in the structure (各成分间的语法结构关系)；
b. the paradigmatic relations between units in the
system (各成分间的语意内在关系);
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6.1.1 What is Context
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［2］ The internal relations of the context of
situation
a. the relations between text and non-linguistic
element, and their general effects ();
b. the analytical relations between “bits” and
“pieces” of the text (words, parts of words,
phrases) and the special elements within the
situation (items, objects, persons, personalities,
events).
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6.1.1 What is Context
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A more dynamic view of context by Mey (in
Pragmatics):
Context is a dynamic, not a static concept: it is to
be understood as the continually changing
surroundings, in the widest sense, that enable the
participants in the communication process to
interact, and in which the linguistic expressions
of their interaction become intelligible.
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6.1.1 What is Context
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Wang Jianping’s definition of context (1989):
Context comprises those factors manifested as
linguistic forms before or after a linguistic
expression and those subjective or objective
environmental factors on both of which a good
grasp of the definite meaning of the linguistic
expression depends during the process of
communication.
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6.1.2 Classification of Context
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According to the scope of study, context can be
divided into context in its narrow sense and
context in its broad sense.
Context in its narrow sense just means linguistic
context. It can be further divided into phrase
context, sentence (utterance) context, paragraph
context and text context.
Context in its broad sense refers to the whole
natural, social and cultural environment related to
the speech communication.
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6.1.2 Classification of Context
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According to whether the contextual factors are
tangible
Transparent context: linguistic forms or
manifested as non-linguistic substances, such as
time, place, participants, or means of
communication.
Opaque context: inferences, conversational
implicatures and some encyclopedic knowledge.
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6.1.2 Classification of Context
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According to whether the contextual factors are
abstract or concrete
Abstract context refers to those contextual
features abstracted from real communication
events.
Concrete context refers to the realization or
instantiation of those abstract contextual features
in real communication activities.
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6.1.2 Classification of Context
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Niu Qiang’s classification of context (1999)
Linguistic context: phonemic context (stress, tone,
intonation), grammatical context (morphemic,
phrasal and syntactic context) and semantic
context (phrasal, sentential, paragraph and
discourse context).
Non-linguistic context: context of situation (time,
occasion and participants) and background
context (common knowledge and context of
culture).
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6.1.2 Classification of Context
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Pei Wen’s classification of context (2000)
Linguistic context: phrasal context and sentential
context.
Paralinguistic context: subjective factors and
objective factors. Subjective factors can be subdivided
into phonemic factors (intonation, stress, pause and
length and kinemic( 体 势 ) factors (gestures, facial
expressions, eye contact etc.
Context of culture: three sub-branches: context of
social life (politics, culture, and sociality culture),
folk-custom, ethno psychology & religious beliefs.
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6.1.2 Classification of Context
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Wang Jianhua’s classification of context (2002)
intra-lingual context (语内上下文)
para-lingual context (语间上下文)
extra-lingual context (语外上下文)
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6.1.2 Classification of Context
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intra-lingual context：
 discourse
context
– paragraph, text, inter-text
 Sentential context
– the sentences before or after the sentence in
question
 lexical context
– collocation, choice of words
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6.1.2 Classification of Context
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Para-lingual context
 by-language
context
– psychology, phonemic, kinemic and other
temporary factors
 on-spot
context
– time, place setting, event, participants, etc.
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6.1.2 Classification of Context
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Extra-lingual context
 cognitive background context
– personal experiences, cognition of real and unreal
world knowledge
 socio-cultural context
– Social custom, thought pattern, ethno-psychology,
religious beliefs, etc.
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6.1.3 Functions of Context
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西椹光正’s 8 functions of context:
1. absolute function;
2. restrictive function;
3. interpretive function;
4. design function;
5. filtering function;
6. generative function;
7. transformative function;
8. acquisitive function
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6.1.3 Functions of Context
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Pei Wen’s six functions of context (2000):
 1.
demonstrative function;
 2. extensive function;
 3. acceptive and rejective function;
 4. restrictive function;
 5. absolute function;
 6. interpretive function
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6.1.3.1 Restrictive Function
 Context
restricts the way people use
language. When people speak or write,
they must follow certain rules, in other
words, they must talk or write in an
appropriate way.
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6.1.3.1 Restrictive Function
 Examples
of extra-lingual context
 Chinese collocations with “狗”：
– 狗腿子(a hired thug)；狗头军师 (a person
who offers bad advice)；狗屁 (horseshit)
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English collocations with “dog”:
– a lucky dog; love me, love my dog; every
dog has its day
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cultural differences
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6.1.3.1 Restrictive Function
 Examples
of para-lingual context
 the famous poem by 王安石 (泊船瓜洲):
京口瓜洲一水间，钟山只隔数重山。
 春风又绿江南岸，明月何时照我还。
 The author tried 到，过，入 and 满 before he
finally found 绿 . No other verb has the
powerful expressive force to match the poet’s
overwhelming feeling stimulated by the paralingual context.
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6.1.3.1 Restrictive Function
 Examples
of on-the-spot context
 The following sentences are all used to ask
about the time:
– Excuse me, could you tell me the right time,
please? (between strangers)
– What time is it, please? (between acquaintances)
– How goes the enemy? (between intimate friends)
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6.1.3.2 Interpersonal Function
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It solely concerns the recipient of the language
message, be it readers or listeners.
 Context helps the reader or hearer to
understand the language phenomenon, to
narrow down the possible interpretation and
get the exact meaning.
 Mey says: “An utterance...doesn’t make any
sense until we place it in its human context” .
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6.2 Context for Translation
 Since
context has a very close
relationship with communication,
translation, as a kind of cross-language
and cross-culture communication, must
be accounted for in terms of this
perspective.
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6.2.1 A Working Definition of Translation
Context
 Translation
context (TC) involves
various factors manifested as linguistic
forms and subjective and objective
factors in both the source language
society and culture and target language
society and culture that affect the
translator’s comprehension of the SLT
and reproduction of the SLT in the TLT.
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6.2.2 Exploration of Translation Context
 Translation
context (TC) involves
various factors manifested as linguistic
forms and subjective and objective
factors in both the source language
society and culture and target language
society and culture that affect the
translator s comprehension of the SLT
and reproduction of the SLT in the TLT.
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6.3 Wording in Translation
Wording is defined as “exact choice and
meaning of words used (Cambridge
International Dictionary of English)
 wording refers to: a form of words used; the
way in which something is expressed. (Oxford
Dictionary)
 We prefer to define wording as: ① selected
words in texts; ② exact choice and meaning
of words used in texts.
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6.3 Wording in Translation
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The importance of wording:
 Halliday: “A text is a semantic unit, not a
grammatical one. Meanings are realized
through wordings…” (2000).
 Mona Baker: “Text is a meaning unit, not a
form unit, but meaning is realized through
form and without understanding the meanings
of individual forms one cannot interpret the
meaning of the text as a whole” (1992).
 Peter Newmark: “The chief difficulties in
translating are lexical, not grammatical”(1988).
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6.3.1 Classification of Word Meaning
Leech and Cruse’s classification:
 1. Conceptual meaning
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– also called denotative meaning or cognitive meaning
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2. Connotative meaning
3. Social meaning
4. Affective meaning
5. Reflected meaning
6. Collocative meaning
7. Thematic meaning
Associative
meaning
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6.3.2 Wording Across Languages
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English and Chinese belong to different
language families: English is a branch of IndoEuropean family while Chinese belongs to the
Sino-Tibetan family, and the two families
sharing very little in word forms.
 Based on structural typology in terms of word
structure, the grammatical relations of Chinese
are indicated by invariable roots or stems and
word order while English is an agglutinative
language in which words are composed by
adding affixes to the roots.
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6.3.2 Wording Across Languages
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Baker lists eleven kinds of disparities between word
meanings among languages: (1) cultural specific
concepts; (2) the source language concept is not
lexicalized in the target language; (3) the source
language word is semantically complex; (4) the
source and target language make different
distinctions in meaning; (5) the target language lacks
a super-ordinate(上位词); (6) the target language
lacks a specific term (hyponym 下 位 词 ); (7)
difference in physical or interpersonal perspective; (8)
differences in expressive meaning; (9) differences in
form; (10) differences in frequency and purpose of
using specific forms; (11) the use of loan words in
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6.3.2 Wording Across Languages
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Three kinds of discrepancies between English
and Chinese words (张培基,1980) :
 1. Partial correspondence
 2. No corresponding words can be found
between English and Chinese.
 3. Polysemous words in English, each sense
matching a corresponding word in Chinese.
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6.3.2 Wording Across Languages
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Examples of Partial correspondence
姑姑
姨妈
伯母
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aunt
舅母
婶母
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6.3.2 Wording Across Languages
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Examples of Partial correspondence
look
看
see
guard
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read
take care of
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6.3.2 Wording Across Languages
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Examples of empty correspondence
English
Chinese
Mascon (mass
concentration)
汉语用解释法表达：月球表层下高密度的物质聚积
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6.3.2 Wording Across Languages
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Examples of Polysemous words in both
languages
English
story
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Chinese
故事
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Homework:
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Exercise 6
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Lu Xun made such remarks: simply for the motif
of A Dream of Red Mansions, there are different
opinions depending on the readers standards:
Confucians see The Book of Changes, neoConfucians see lewdness, talented scholars see
pathos, revolutionists see excluding the Manchus,
and gossipmongers see palace secrets. (经济学家
看到了《易》, 道学家看到了淫, 才子看到 缠绵,
革命家看到了排满, 流学家看到了宫围秘事 。)
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6.3.2 Wording Across Languages
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Examples of Polysemous words in both
languages
English
story
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Chinese
小说
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