英语论文网

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