英语论文网

imal 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 langua