从关联理论的角度看翻译中的语境问题
[Abstract]
Sperber and Wilson first put forward the Relevance Theory, which explains linguistic activities in the framework of cognition. Their student Ernst-August Gutt applied it to translation studies and got an encouraging result. He pointed out that translation is not only a communicative activity, but also a cognitive activity. Context plays a very important role in our understanding of the utterance and text. A successful translation requires the translator to reason according to the dynamic context, which depends so much on the relevance of the language and environment. In fact, the process of translation is a process of context reasoning and selecting, which is always dynamic and developing as the circumstances change. During the process of translation, the main task of translator is to find out the relevance, especially the optimal relevance between the language and context. According to the principle of the optimal relevance, the translator could understand the original text correctly, and then translate it into target language appropriately by composing and reasoning the most suitable context. Discussing on context in the perspective of relevance theory provides a new view to study and practice translation.
[Key Words] Translation; communication; relevance theory; optimal relevance; cognitive context; dynamic context
【摘 要】关联理论是由Sperber and Wilson 最早提出的，它从认知的角度解释了许多的语言活动。随后，Wilson的学生Gutt 最早把这一理论运用于翻译研究中，并取得突破性的进展。他还指出，翻译不仅仅是一项交际活动，更是一项认知活动。在我们理解一段话语或文字的时候，语境往往起着非常重要的作用。成功的翻译往往要求翻译者能够根据动态语境进行推理，而动态语境又依赖于语言与环境的关联。实际上，翻译的过程就是一个语境推理和选择的动态的，不断的过程。因此，在翻译的过程中，译者的主要任务就是找出语言与语境之间的关联，特别是最佳关联。根据最佳关联理论，翻译者就能通过构建最适合的语境，准确地理解源语文章，并且比较贴切地把它翻译成目的语。因此，从语用关联的角度探讨语境问题为我们的翻译研究和翻译实践提供了一个全新的视角。
【关键词】翻译；交际活动；关联理论；最佳关联；认知语境；动态语境
1. Introduction
Translation is not only a linguistic activity that transforms the meaning from one language to another with words as its medium, but also a complicated thinking activity that contains many linguistic and non-linguistic components. So many problems on translation may not be solved by the only linguistic approach. After the birth of pragmatics, many translation scholars applied it into the research of translation studies and got some encouraging results. Because pragmatics studies focus on the relations between language and context, the pragmatic approach of translation emphasizes on the relations between text and context. In this way, pragmatics provides us a new and beneficial view to study translation.
The British linguists Malinowski originally put forward the word “context” in 1920s. From then on, many linguists elaborated context from many different perspectives and they had a consensus that context is very important to understand the utterance and text. Though many linguists and translation scholars had known the importance of context and had put much effort into context studies, the traditional context studies regard context as a static, isolated and fixed situation.
According to many linguists and translators, translation is a very special kind of communication that does not always happen among people face to face, and it depends much on the context. Understanding the semantic meaning of a text is not sufficient, comprehending the contextual meaning is also very important for good translation. Communication is a continuous and dynamic process of changes and development, and so is context. Translators do not engage in the mere translation of words; do not translate according to those static and fixed contextual elements, their interpretive acts deal with reasoning and exploration of situations that are constituted by an intense interaction of linguistic, psychological, anthropological, and cultural phenomena. [1] In this way, a dynamic context that depends so much on the relevance of the language and environment is established in the process of translating. So during the process of translation, the main task of translator is to find out the relevance, especially the optimal relevance between the language and context.
2. Relevance Theory and Optimal Relevance
2.1. Relevance Theory
Linguists Sperber and Wilson first put forward the Relevance Theory in the famous linguistic work “Relevance: Communication and Cognition”, which explains linguistic activities in the framework of cognition. In the Relevance Theory, the communication including verbal and non-verbal communicative activities is regarded as a cognitive activity, and its success depends on the consensus towards in cognitive environment between both sides of communication. The cognitive environment always includes lexical meaning, encyclopedic knowledge and logical information. To have a successful communication, the search for the consensus and relevance is the most important. According to this consensus and the relevance, people can understand the intention and purpose of the speaker or the author easily.
Sperber and Wilson also suggested that the understanding of the utterance is not only a reasoning process, but also a process of ostensive inference. Traditionally, there are two models of communication. One is the coded model that regards language as a code system. And in the coded model, the communication is a process of codes transformation. The other one is inferential communication that depends much on the context reasoning. Therefore, to understand the utterance, especially those culture-oriented utterances, simply coding and decoding is far less than enough. Both of the models only partially explain the communication, but cannot reveal the nature of communication, which is more complicated than just coding and decoding. Sperber and Wilson combined these two models, and then advanced the concept of “Ostensive-Inferential Communication”, in which the communication is regarded as an inferential process, and context inference plays an important role in it. “Strictly speaking, relevance theory applied not to all communication in the sense of any kind of information transfer, but to ‘ostensive communication’ or, more explicitly, to ‘Ostensive-Inferential Communication’: ‘ostensive-inferential communication consists in making manifest to an audience one’s attention to make manifest a basic layer of information’, this basic layer of information being the communicator’s informative intention.” [2]
2.2. Relevance and degree of relevance
In communication, the same sentence always has different understandings under different conditions. These different understandings are not aroused by the word meaning, but by many other non-verbal factors, such as time, place, social background, status and intention of the speaker or the author. Usually, people cannot understand these factors, so people cannot understand the real meaning of a sentence and many misunderstandings occur. Sometimes, people cannot immediately relate these factors to the certain utterance and the communication is blocked. So people need to know how the two relate to each other and how to reason and understand the meaning of an utterance. Thus people introduce the notion of relevance, which Sperber and Wilson define in terms of the following conditions:
Extent condition 1: an assumption is relevant in a context to the extent that its contextual effects in this context are large.
Extent condition 2: an assumption is relevant in a context to the extent that effort required to process it in this context is small. [3]
Thus we see firstly that relevance is dependent on the interplay of two factors: contextual effects and processing effort, which are crucial factors that make inferential communication possible. Secondly, since both these factors are context-dependent, the notion of “relevance” itself is context-dependent, too. Thirdly, relevance is comparative notion----utterances can vary according to the degree of relevance they achieve in some context. [4]
According to Sperber and Wilson, the degree of relevance depends on the contextual effects and processing effort. However, the contextual effects cannot be achieved easily. Even if people put in a lot of processing effort, they may not achieve the sufficient contextual effects. The achievement of contextual effects always depends on the following factors: the complexity of an utterance, the explication of the context and processing effort that are made to reason the contextual effects. In the framework of relevance not all the contextual implications of a given proposition can be easy to obtain. Those derived from small, easily accessible contexts will be relatively cheap in processing terms. Those derived from large, less easily accessible contexts will be relatively expensive in processing terms, because of the additional effort required to put into reasoning and selecting the most suitable context to the certain context. So the universal aim in context processing is to obtain the maximum of contextual implication in return for any processing effort expended.
But relevance is a comparative concept, for it contrasts with the context and depends on the context; and also it is decided by the communicators’ cognitive capacity and environment, so the degree of relevance can be classified as maximally relevant, very relevant, weakly relevant and irrelevant. Look at the following examples:
(1) A: How long did the conference last?
B: Two hours.
In this dialogue, the contextual effect is maximal, the processing efforts are minimal, the relevance is the strongest, so we can say that the dialogue has a very clear context, and need little processing efforts. And the utterance and context are maximally relevant.
(2) A: I am out of petrol.
B: There is a garage around the corner.
In the dialogue above, sentence A actually means, “Where can I buy petrol?” And sentence B means that “You can buy petrol in the garage”. In this case, sentence A and B seems irrelevant, but “we can buy petrol in the garage” is a common sense that everybody knows it. We still can understand the utterance, but it needs hearers more processing efforts than the first example. So it is still a very relevant utterance.
(3) A: The hostess is an awful bore. Do you think so?
B: The roses are lovely, aren’t they?
In this case, B gives a completely irrelevant answer to A, and gives no information about question. The answer seems irrelevant semantically, while it has relevance pragmatically. In this time, to obtain certain contextual effects, lots of processing efforts needed, and then the utterance will have a special conversation meaning: let’s not talk about the hostess here and now.
2.3. Principle of relevance and optimal relevance
The linguistic communication is relevance-oriented, and “cost” and “benefit” are two important factors in this process. All of the “cost” and “benefit” of both communicators are all taken into account. However, whether an utterance has adequate relevance, many factors such as the expression styles of an utterance, the hearer’s cognitive environment, intellectual and sensibility, should be taken into account. “The different degrees of accessibility of contextual assumptions make themselves felt by the amount of effort their retrieval requires in a particular act of communication. This sensibility to processing effort is one of the crucial factors that make inferential communication possible: it seems that communication, no doubt like many other human activities, is determined by the desire of optimization of resources, and one aim of optimization is to keep the effort spent to a minimum.” [5] During the process of the ostensive communication, both communicators try their best to look for the optimal relevance of the speaker’s utterance and the hearer’s cognitive environment, trying to make successful communication. But what is the optimal relevance? And Sperber and Wilson defined “the presumption of optimal relevance” as follows:
(a) The ostensive stimulus is the most relevant enough for it to be worth the addressee’s effort to process it.
(b) The ostensive stimulus is the most relevant one compatible with the communicator’s abilities and preferences. [6]
“The central claim of relevance theory is that human communication crucially creates an expectation of optimal relevance, that is, an expectation on the part of the hearer that his attempt at interpretation will yield adequate contextual effects at minimal processing cost. This fact is believed to be part of your human psychology, and is expressed in relevance theory as the principle of relevance:
Every act of ostensive communication communicates the presumption of its own optimal relevance.” [7]
Otherwise, not all the ostensive stimulus can obtain the optimal relevance. If and only if an utterance achieves enough contextual effect that can attract the hearer’s attention, and if and only if an utterance makes the hearer need no gratuitous mental effort, the optimal relevance can be obtained. That is, to obtain the optimal relevance, the speaker implicitly and automatically conveys the assumption that the hearer can expect to derive adequate contextual effects without spending unnecessary efforts. [8]
In the search for adequate contextual effects, the hearer will also assume that it is not being put to any gratuitous expenditure of processing effort. And it offers the answer to the question: how does a hearer manage to select the right set of contextual assumptions from all he knows? “In the pursuit of optimal relevance it turns first to highly accessible information, looking for adequate contextual effects; if this information does yield contextual effects adequate to the occasion in a way the speaker could foreseen, then it will assume that it has used the right, that is, speaker-intended, contextual information.” [9]
People cannot give the relevance a clear definition. When people definite the relevance, they not only should think about contextual effects, but also should think about the processing effort that the hearers have put into. That is, the relevance is the result of the interplays of the contextual effects and processing efforts. In other words, if the processing effort is minimal while the contextual effects are maximal, the utterance has the optimal relevance and vise visa. The relevance theory is based on the economical principle. During the process of the communication, people always hope that they can obtain as much contextual effect as possible with as little processing effort as possible.
3. Discussion on context in the perspective of the relevance theory
3.1. Importance and definitions of context
Translation is the replacement of contextual meanings in one language by the equivalent meanings in another language. Unlike other kinds of communicative activities, translation bases on the texts, which is quite different from conversations. In translation, the word “text” is used to refer to an article, or the main body of a book, which refers to the original text or the translated text. And a text is not isolated, for it always stays in a relevant language environment that we name it “context”. Context is very important to translation. Generally speaking, text exists within context and context always accompanies text. It is the context that makes the text come to life.
Now that context plays so important a role in translation, before further the discussion, the most important thing is to make clear a question: what is context? In English, “context” originated from the Latin word “contextus”, which means, “a joining together”. According to the Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, context means “the parts of a sentence, paragraph, discourse etc, immediately next to or surrounding a specified word or passage and determining its exact meaning.” It also refers to “the whole situation, background, or environment relevant to a particular event, personality, creation etc.” [10] These are the dictionary meanings of context, and on the basis of them, many linguists and translation scholars developed their own definition of context.
Some simply use the word “context”; some prefer the term “situational context”, “context of situation”, and some others propose such terms as “context of culture”, “context of utterance”. Besides, quite a few persons choose the word “environment” and propose some terms like the following: language environment, pragmatic environment, social environment, natural environment etc. Up until now, the meaning of context is extended to a large scale, but no clear definitions have been given to. [11]
Although people have not yet come to agreement on using the term “context”, all the people know the importance of context in understanding the text, especially in translation. Many translators realize that one should never understand a single word without considering its context. Here is a simple illustration may make the point clear.
(4) “Out in the west where men are men”. These two “men” will definitely puzzle many people if the background or the situation of this phrase used is not clear. And if people do not know that this “west” refer to the western part of the United States, they will not be able to know that the second “men” refer to Chinese word “男子汉” as well as “cowboys” who are a sort of men working on horse back, employed to look after cattle in the Western part of the United States.
In a word, context is a systematic construct consisting of linguistic and non-linguistic factors determining the understanding and interpretation of text. Furthermore, both linguistic and non-linguistic context are composed of various kinds of contextual factors, such as language systems, geographical factors, social backgrounds and culture differences etc.
3.2. Classifications of context
Traditionally, people classify context in different perspectives. Some just simply classify it as linguistic context or non-linguistic context. Linguistic context is always relevant to the phonology, lexicology, grammar, semantics, pragmatics, rhetoric, logic, discourses etc. And non-linguistic context always consists of social environment (including culture, customs, social background, etc) and natural environment (including time, place, audience, etc).
Linguists Duranti and Goodwin suggest that context consists of text, situation, behavior environment, and immediate background knowledge. Text refers to phrase context, sentence context and discourse context that are closely related to linguistic factors. Situation refers to “space and framework of language communication”, which is also called situational context. Utterance features refer to the code of communicators. [12] In bi-linguistic and multi-linguistic society, people intentionally transfer language codes to achieve their purpose of communication. Gumperz gives utterance features another name, which is conceptualization cues, including stress, intonation, rhythm, smile, habitual expressions and so on. Behavior environment refers to the gestures and body languages that communicators use to express their meanings and feelings. Immediate background knowledge refers to encyclopedic knowledge, accidents and the usage of background knowledge. [13]
On the basis of precious classification, Chen Zhi’ang and Wenxu made a good conclusion. They classified context as follows: ① broad-sensed context and narrow-sensed context ② situation context and text ③ objective context and subjective context ④implicit context and explicit context ⑤actual context and invented context ⑥ verbal context and non-verbal context. [14]
In a broad sense, context refers to the whole natural, social and cultural background that relevant to communication, and it is the “big context”; in a narrow sense, context is the “small context” which refers to linguistic context, including words, sentences, paragraphs, discourses and grammars. Situation context means real situation that linguistic activities happen in, including communicators, time, place, topic, medium, the formality of communication and so on. Subjective context refers to communicators’ subjective factors, such as personality, interest, feeling and mood; objective context refers to the objective existence in the objective world, which is made of the place and time of communication, and various complicated social and cultural environment. Explicit context is the linguistic and non-linguistic environment that obviously shows in the communication, including time, place, audience style etc; implicit context is the hidden meaning and encyclopedic knowledge that is related to but hidden from the real situation. Actual context is the real environment of communication, while invented context is the fabricated environment that always appears in fictions and poems. Verbal context is the context that expresses in language, and non-verbal context always refers to gestures and body languages.
From the above classifications, one can easily find that different classifications have many similarities and overlaps. Both of these classifications are reasonable in some aspects, but imperfect in some other aspects, so we cannot say which one is better than another. But all of these interpretations of context are static and fixed, and all of the contextual components are regarded as static, fixed and isolated. As the deepening of the context study, as the combination of the context study and communication study, traditional and static context study cannot meet the needs of developing communication any more. People need to discuss context in a new perspective.
3.3. Discussion on context in the perspective of pragmatics and relevance
3.3.1. Static context and dynamic context
As what is discussed above, the traditional views of context are static and fixed. But the static study on context cannot meet the need of dynamic communication process. According to Thomas, meaning is not fixed only decided by words, and the speaker alone also does not arouse it; meaning is dynamic and it depends on the negotiation of communicators. And she considered the pragmatics as “the study of interactive meaning”. In her view, context is dynamic and changing all the time according to all the factors relevant to communication. [15] Most of the contextual factors are developing, and all the developing factors would probably become the elements of context.
As we all know, there are many components forming the context, and these contextual components are “the pool of shared knowledge”, which are very important to understand the utterance or text. But not all the contextual components can be seen as context, only those closely relate to the current communication can form the context. Professor Liu Huanhui pointed out that all the probable contextual components, objective or subjective, would not form the context if they lose the relevance to the linguistic communication. ”. [16]
Commonly, people regard the linguistic communication as a r process of circular, which all the participators play the roles of speaker and hearer alternatively. But Frank Dance suggested that the process of communication is a process of twisting ascendance, and the linguistic communication is a continuously developing process. [17] Every success in information and meaning transformation means that the communication would be up to a new height. Otherwise, if a participator does not understand or misunderstand of the other participator’s intentional meaning, the communication would be blocked or drawn back. In another word, the linguistic communication is dynamic, the precious information is the foreword of the latter information, and then the latter information becomes the foreword of the next latter information. In this way, the context is changing as the communication is developing. Hence, context is a dynamic concept as well as communication.
In the perspective of pragmatics, “static context is by no means unimportant, but we attaché more importance to dynamic context, because communication is based on interactive meaning generation and interpretation on the one hand, and on dynamic negotiation and interpretation of context on the other, and all communication starts from a certain relevant given context, and following the ostensive-inference model, dynamically and effectively arrives at the invisible implicit premise and implicit conclusion.” [18] Actually, the process of understanding an utterance or a text is a process of context proposition and selection. The hearer should select some relevant contextual components to form a communication environment within limited time, so that one can understand the utterance or text more quickly and effectively.
Under the framework of dynamic context, context is not statically seen as the pool of shared knowledge relating to an utterance, but seen as a continuously developing process, which reflects the dynamic relations between communicators and environment. On one hand, the communicators should be restricted by context, that is, an utterance is meaningful only if it can adjust to a certain context. On the other hand, the communicators can intentionally manipulate the contextual components to form a context that is beneficial to their linguistic communication. In other words, the communicators are not only controlled by context, they also control text.
3.3.2. Cognitive context
In the perspective of relevance theory, context is a psychological concept: “A context is a psychological construct, a subset of the hearer’s assumptions about the world.” [19] So in relevance theory, context does not refer to some part of external environment of the communicators, be it preceding or following an utterance, situational circumstances, cultural factors, natural and social environment, etc; it rather refers to part of their “assumptions about the world” or cognitive environment, as it is called. So the cognitive context discusses context in the perspective of relevance theory and under the framework of cognition. The notion of ‘cognitive context’ takes into account the various external factors but places the emphasis on the information they provided and its mental availability for the interpretation process. [20] According to Sperber and Wilson, “the cognitive context of a person comprises a potentially huge amount of very varied information. It includes information that can be perceived in the physical environment, information that can be retrieved from memory----in itself a vast store of information, including information deriving from preceding utterances plus any cultural or any other knowledge stored there ----and furthermore information that can be inferred from those two sources.” [21] Since any of this information could serve as the potential context, the most important question for a successful communication is: how the hearers or translators manage to select the actual, speaker-intended assumptions from among all the assumptions they could use form their environment? Look at the following examples:
(5). A: Do you like rugby?
B: I am a New Zealander.
In this example, A asks a simple question that just need the hearer give an answer of “yes” or “no”. But B gives a confusing and irrelevant answer so that A cannot understand immediately. So A needs some efforts to guess or reason the actual meaning of B. After a series of assumptions and retrieves in the memory, A may get information: Rugby is a very popular game in New Zealand; almost every New Zealander likes this game. Up until then, A probably knows the actual meaning of B: “Of course I like rugby.”
B: Coffee would keep me awake.
In this case, A wants to offer B a coffee, so A asks the question hoping to get a definite answer. However, B does not give A an obvious answer, but gives an irrelevant answer to A’s question. Of course, A would feel puzzled: “what is the meaning of B? Does he want coffee or not?” At this time, A should guess and reason the actual meaning of B according to some contextual components, such as time, place, situation, character and mood of B, the relations of A and B, etc. If B is very tired and wanting to sleep well at night, then the intended meaning of B is: “No, thanks!” If B has a lot of work to do and need to stay up all night, then the intended meaning of B is: “Yes, please!”
As the above examples show, a same sentence has many different understandings and meanings. The crucial problem is: how to choose the right or suitable meaning of a sentence in the certain situation. And Sperber and Wilson hold the opinion that any utterances have different meaning in different situation; the speaker should express the crucial emphasis by the way of ostensive inference, guiding the hearer to reason the actual context in the correct direction.
Human beings have a natural interest in improving their understanding of the world around them, this understanding consisting of the assumptions about the world, which they have stored, in memory. [22] That is, human beings like to internalize the external environment, and their own experience to form a cognitive context that is helpful for their understanding of the utterance or text. So the cognitive context is not established before the understanding of an utterance, but established during the process of understanding by continuous selection.
The process of processing and selecting the optimal context is a process of looking for the optimal relevance of utterance and context. Moreover, cognitive context is the consequence of assumptions selecting. However, the selection of context would definitely enlarge the context. In relevance theory, cognitive context is not static and fixed; it is a developing dynamic concept. In order to give a relevant interpretation to an utterance, people have to add some more relevant assumptions to context.
The context is dynamic and cognitive; it is composed of a series of assumptions, which people put into mind for understanding the utterance correctly. The context is closely related to the human thinking activities; the key motile factor that affects the understanding of an utterance is people’s cognitive competence towards the world. “The realizations of the dynamic properties of context enable us to take a new look at the notion of communicative competence, which means more than the possession of knowledge and ability to produce appropriate communicative behaviors. To be communicatively competent, one should also be capable of actively manipulating aspects of context to advance his or her communicative goals and effectively interpret meaning by creating an appropriate context for the interpretation procedure.”[23] To sum up, in the perspective of relevance theory, the context in communication is dynamic, and the key of utterance understanding is to look for relevance in the cognitive context.
4. Context and translation
Translation can be seen as a linguistic communication activity that aims at transferring meaning form one language to another language, and it depends so much on the context. For the understanding of context would restrict the success of translation. In relevance theory, translation is a process of reasoning and perceiving, and it bases on cognition. “Translation cannot be termed purely ‘linguistic operation’, but rather must be thought of as a psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic and pragmalinguistic process, which lends itself to an exhaustive scientific depiction only with the greatest difficult.” [24] So in the process of translation, not only linguistic factors, but also many other factors need to be taken into account. And most of these factors, linguistic or non-linguistic, are important components of the context. Whether a translation is successful or not always lies on full understanding of the context. No context, no translation.
4.1. The important role that context plays for the understanding of the original text
In fact, translation is a substitute to people who cannot read or understand the original language. Hence the main task of translators is to change texts from the source language to the target language without changing the original meaning evidently. In this regard, a translator is the connection between the author and the reader of target language. In this connection, the fundamental requirement to a translator is to understand the original text correctly so that the translator can follow the principle ---faithfulness to the original text during translation. [25] To understand the original text, one has to first understand every word, then every sentence, every paragraph and every text. However, understanding of words, sentence, paragraphs and texts is not enough. Moreover, one cannot understand them correctly without considering the context. The exact meaning expressed by the words or sentences in the original is constantly restricted by the context.
4.1.1. The linguistic context restricts our understanding of the original text.
In English vocabulary, there are a large number of words having more than one meaning, that is, the same word may have different meanings used in different sentences. When a word with many meanings is used in inadequate context, translators have to reason and choose the correct meaning in Chinese according to the words that occur together with the word in the sentence. Look at the following examples; “air” has different meanings in each sentence.
(7). He had to get some air, get his breath, and get out of the crowd.
他得呼吸点空气，透透气，闯出重围。
(8). The name of the child, the air of the mother, the tone of the voice, and all awakened a train of recollections in his mind.
孩子的名字，母亲的神情，以及她说话的腔调，这一切都在他脑子里引起了一大串回忆。
(9). But as the old man watched, a small tuna rose in the air, turned and dropped head first into new water.
然而老人盯着，只见一条小金枪鱼跃到空中，一个转身，头朝下,扎进了水里了。
The first “air” means “空气” in Chinese, the second one means “神情” and the last one can be translate into “空中”. It is the context that helps the translators narrow down the meanings and find out the exact meaning of the word.
Seeing the word “green”, many people will immediately match it to the Chinese word “绿色”. However, its Chinese meanings are much more than that, and only context will determine exactly which Chinese phrase can match it. The following phrases would show this point.
(10) a green Christmas 温暖无雪的圣诞节
a girl green from school 刚出校门的姑娘
a green old age 精力旺盛，老当益壮
green with envy 十分嫉妒
in green tree 处于佳境
keep the memory green 永记不忘
The example shows that, to understand and translate a word correctly is not easy work. Just as Firth, a famous British linguist, remarks: “Each word when used in a new context is a new.” So the context is very important for translator to choose the correct meanings for the words used in different situation. In other words, it is the context that determines the exact meanings of a word.
Furthermore, there are many languages in the world, and each language is fundamentally a system of conventional symbols by which people communicate with each other. There exist differences in the thinking patterns, cultures and languages in different countries. To a translator, these differences are so important that it would determine the context and the exact meaning of a word. For example, in Chinese, different ranks have different name, such as “大伯，叔叔， 舅舅，姑父，姨父” for which the native speakers of English just have one name “uncle”.
(11) “Uncle Tom was a lightweight fleet boxing champion….” If people just look at this sentence alone without considering the context, people would not translate it into Chinese correctly. But if one looks through the whole article, and finds another sentence “My mother’s youngest brother…” And of course, one could immediately realize that Uncle Tom, mother’s youngest brother should be “舅舅” in Chinese.
As is shown by the above example, context is related not only to the translation of a single word, but also to the translation of a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph, as well as a text. To determine the exact meaning of any texts, one must inevitably look through the whole text, and then choose the most suitable meaning of a word according to the whole context.
4.1.2. The non-linguistic context restricts the understanding of the original text
Commonly, when people talk about context, people usually think of linguistic context, hardly realize the importance of non-linguistic context, which often has greater influence on the translation then we realize. Sometimes, we can see that clues to the exact meaning of one part of text may be found in another part of text. But in many circumstances, the clue to the exact meaning of a text is to be found, not in the immediate linguistic context, but in its non-linguistic context. [26] As what is mentioned above, non-linguistic context consists of so many factors, ranging from the physical background to the psychological background. In translation, all of these non-linguistic factors are crucial for our understanding of the texts, especially those culture-oriented texts.
(12) “Quickly, Mark!” Mick said and swung the car into the left lane. A translator translated it into Chinese like this: “快点儿，马克！”迈克一边说，一边把车子拐进了左边的巷子。This version may puzzle many people, and some would ask: “Why did he swing the car into a small alley rather than an express way in such a state of emergence?” In fact, cars are always driven on the right, and “the left lane” means, “fast traffic lane on a street” in America. Obviously, the translator did not know this rule in America, so he misunderstood the real meaning of “the left lane”. And the Chinese correspondence of “the left lane” should be “快车道”. Thus, it is necessary and important for a translator to spend more time in making clear some social customs and rules in translation.
Then, take the word “grass” for another example.
To one person it may mean “something in front of the house that is green, has to be watered and must be mowed often”. So the real meaning of sentence, (13) “Do not walk on the grass!” is “勿踏草坪” in Chinese.
To another person “grass” may mean “something that is rolled in paper and smoked”, that is, “tobacco”. Look at this sentence: (14) “Tom sat on the grass and lighted his grass.” In this situation, the two “grass” have different meanings. The first one refers to “草坪” in Chinese while the second one means “香烟”.
So it is easy to find that there is no “real” meaning without knowing the context. Every person decides the meaning of a word from his own personal background. The following is another example:
(15). The United States has now set up a loneliness industry
Look at this sentence at the first sight, many questions may occur. What is the meaning of “loneliness industry”? Does it mean “孤独产业”in Chinese？All of these questions may puzzle many translators if they do not know the social background of the “loneliness industry”. Departing from the social situation of the United States, it is very difficult to understand and translate this sentence correctly. In fact, the “loneliness industry” refers to a part of American social welfare project. In the United States, a large number of old citizens live lonely, with little care from their relatives, which has been a serious social problem. So the government of the United States sets up a social welfare project named “loneliness industry”. Knowing this social background, we can easily understand the exact meaning of the sentence and translate it as “美国政府建立了一种为社会孤寡老人服务的社会项目”.
4.2. Reason and select the context according to the language and the environment
The understanding of the original text under the impact of contextual factors is only the first step in translation. In this step, translators may make many assumptions according to different contextual factors. And the next step is the selection of the most suitable context and the best translation according to the principle of relevance between context and text. And in this step, the translators have to manage to make the expectation of target language reader accord with the intention of the author. During the process of translation, the translators need to analyze and reason the context dynamically, and make the translation as close to the intended meaning of the author as possible.
From what has just been said, any aspect of interpretation or translation depends on context:
“Context determines the disambiguation of linguistically ambiguous expressions: wrong contextual assumptions can lead to the choice of the wrong semantic representation of such expressions.
Context is usually needed to determine the prepositional form of an utterance: again mismatches of context can lead to the derivation of a wrong propositional form.
Context is needed to derive the implicatures of an utterance. Use of the wrong context can lead to the derivation of implicatures not intended—or it can cause intended implicatures to be missed.
Context is needed to determine whether a propositional form is intended as an explicature, or whether it serves only to convey implicatures. Since this depends on the contextual assumptions available, the use of inappropriate context can lead to misunderstandings.” [27]
Consider the following example:
(16). She opened it carelessly. “Oh, Uncle, why do you carry so much cash when you have a Dinner’s Card?” She said sarcastically.
Some translated it like this: 她粗心地打开钱包。“啊，叔叔，你既然有一张用餐卡，为什么还要带这么多现金啊？”她讥讽道。
Seeing the phrase “Dinner’s Card”, many people would connect it with the meaning “a card used for dining”. If people do not know the background knowledge of “Dinner’s card”, they will make a wrong assumption that leads to the wrong translation. After looking it up in the American encyclopedia, one can easily find out that “Dinner’s card” is a kind of credit card, which can be used for purchasing in the store without paying in cash. So the real translation of the sentence should be: 她满不在乎地打开钱包。“哎呀，大叔，你有迪纳尔信用卡，为什么还要带这么多的现金呢？”
Here is another example:
(17). My grandmother passed away last summer.
This sentence can be translated into Chinese in two ways: “我祖母是在去年夏天去世的”or “我祖母是今年夏天去世的”. In this case, it need translator to reason according to the exact time that this sentence said. If the sentence is said in the time before the summer, then “last summer” means “去年夏天”in Chinese; but if the sentence is said in the time after the summer, then “last summer” may means “今年夏天” or“去年夏天”. In this case, to translate the sentence correctly, the contextual factors like time should be taken into account during the process of translation.
Sometimes, the language expressions can influence the interpretations of people by guiding the search for relevance, that is, by imposing constraints on the relevance of the utterance in which they occur. This can be done, for instance, by the use of words or morphemes that indicate how the proposition expressed is to achieve relevance, say, as the conclusion or a premise of an argument. [28]
Consider examples (18) and (19):
(18). So Charles has lost his car keys.
(19). After all, Charles has lost his car keys.
These two utterances have the same propositional forms, referring to the same individual called “Charles”, the same car, the same set of car keys; but one would still feel that these two utterances differ significantly in their overall interpretation. The difference is, of course, due to the presence of the connectives “so” and “after all”. And these connectives constrain the way that the utterance is relevant: thus the “so” in utterance (18) indicates that this utterance is relevant as the conclusion to a contextually assumed argument, but the “after all” in (19) indicates that this utterance is relevant as a premise in a contextually assumed argument. In other words, two utterances with identical propositional forms may differ in their interpretations precisely because the form is to be related to the context, and hence on what contextual effects it is to have. Just as Sperber and Wilson remark:
“If two thoughts or utterance have the same propositional form, and hence share all their analytic implications, they also, of course, share all their contextual implications in every context.” [29]
In a word, translation represents a continuous making of choices ranging from reasoning the suitable context according to the language and environment to selecting the correct context according to the relevance of the language and environment. In the whole process of reasoning and selecting, the context is always a dynamic.
4.3.To find out the appropriate expression according to the suitable situation and context in the target language
Translation, as a case of inter-lingual activity, therefore, achieves relevance by informing the target audience of what the original author said or wrote in the source language. So to a successful translator, understanding the original text is the first step. And after doing that, the main task of translators is to express the original meaning in target language without changing the author’s intention. The following parts would discuss how context helps translators to transfer the original text to the target text, ranging from words and phrases, the sentence structure, to the style of the whole text.
4.3.1. Disposing proper words and phrases in proper situation.
The meaning of a single is important in translation, for it is the basis of the meaning of the whole text. But successful translators never translate isolated words, for words are all more or less bound by their syntactic, situational, cultural, and social contexts.
Look at the following examples:
(20). Like charges repel, unlike charges attract.
相同电荷相斥，不同电荷相吸。
(21). He likes English more than Chinese.
他喜欢甚于喜欢语文。
(22). Like knows like.
英雄识英雄。
The word “like” has different meanings when used in different contexts. The first one should be translated into “相同”,the second “like” means “喜欢”, and the last one refers to the Chinese “英雄”. Without the context, the single word would become meaningless and it is only a symbol. And the context always would give a word many different meanings in different situations.
But sometimes, a contextual difference may reverse the meaning of some words. For example, “多” and “少”are a pair of antonyms in that one may be regarded as meaning of “much ,a lot of” and the other as “a little”. The two sentences “我有很多钱”and “我只有很少的钱” may be translated respectively into “I have much money” and “I have a little money”. However, when the two words are combined with “这么”and put into a special context, the result may be quite interesting. For example, the sentences “我只有这么多钱” and “我只有这么少钱” are all can be translated into English like this: “I have only such a little money”
4.3.2. Indicating the whole style of text
A style is a manner of expressing one’s thoughts and feelings in words. Generally, there are three factors affecting the writer’s styles. First, his own personality, thinking pattern, and his feelings that determines his mode of expression; second, the occasion on which he is writing, the particular purpose which directs his pen at the moment of writing; third, the age in which he lives. [30] As Savory said, “Style is the essential characteristic of every piece of writing, the outcome of the writer’s personality and his emotions at the moment, and no single paragraph can be put tighter without revealing in some degree the nature of its author.”[31]
It is the complexity of context that determines the varieties of style and adds difficulties to translation. On the one hand, the original text involves a kind of context; on the other hand, the target text also involves another kind of context. [32] In order to make clear the complex relationship between them, a translator should find out the relevance of language and context, and make sure that the target and the original are in the state of dynamic equivalence. That is, during the process of translation, the translators should try their best to help the target text readers understand the original meaning by reasoning the context with little effort.
In Gettysburg Address, Lincoln said a very famous sentence, (23) “…a government of people, by people and for people”. In most situations, people translate it into Chinese “民有，民治， 民享政府”, and this version is accepted by most people. But for a certain group of people, such as children and uneducated persons, they may be puzzled by this version. Hence some suggest another translation: “为人民所有，为人民所治， 为人民服务的政府”. This version may not as brief as the first one, but it is clearer in meaning and easier to understand. So sometimes, the audience and the situation decide the style of translation. On the base of relevance theory, translators should manage to connect the audience with the context, making the audience understand the original meaning without taking much effort. That is, try to compose the most suitable context according to the principle of optimal relevance. The audience is changeable, so the context should be dynamic and develop with the changes of suitable.
Emerson once said: “A man’s style is his mind’s voice”. The style is also a crucial contextual factor in translation. If people want to make a good translation, they had better translate the style appropriately and suitably, which must depend on the analysis of context.
5.Conclusion
In a word, discussing on context in translation in perspective of the relevance theory opens up a new view for translation studies and practice. In relevance theory, translation is a process of cognition and assumption. And the relevance-approached translation regards translation as an interactive process between the author, the translator and the reader of target text, and discusses translation dynamically. By searching for the cognitive and dynamic context, the translator can easily find out the optimal relevance between language and context, and then transfer the intention of the author to the readers correctly. Though the study in this area has got many encouraging results, it is not a perfect theory of translation at the present. For discussion translation in the perspective of relevance emphasize the psychological and cognitive factors of the context, otherwise, most of these factors are dynamic and alternative all the time. It provides translators a new way of translation, but add more difficulties to translators. So it needs more translators and scholars to put much effort to improve it and perfect it.
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