从语篇分析的角度看翻译中的对等

Modern Foreign Languages (Quarterly) Vol.24, No.1 January 2001: 78-84 Guangzhou, China Aspects of Translation from a Discoursal Perspective

ZHANG Mei-fang

Translation is a new discipline in academic terms. It is just starting to feature as a subject of study in its own right. Like other new disciplines, it needs to draw on the findings and t heories of other related disciplines in order to develop its own methods. But which disciplines it can be naturally and effectively related to is still a matter of some controversy.

Linguistics is a discipline which studies language both in its own right and as a tool for communication. It should therefore have a great deal to offer to the budding discipline of translation studies. This is particularly true of functional linguistics which no longer restricts itself to the study of linguistic structure and phenomena, but extends itself to the study of language in use. In creating a new text out of a previously existing one, translators inevitably go beyond what is said and written in the original text, trying to see the context in which the text unfolds and in which it is to be interpreted. In studying this complex process at work, we are in effect seeking insights which take us beyond translation itself towards the whole relationship between language activity and the social context in which it takes place.

This paper aims at introducing M.A.K. Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics to explain some aspects of translation. According to Halliday and Hasan (1989), language is either for action or for information, so it is organized by the function it is called on to serve and shaped by its purposes. All use s of language have a context. The textual features enable the discourse to cohere not only with itself but also with its context of situation which is analyzed by Halliday and Hasan into three components (field of discourse, tenor of discourse and mode of discourse), corresponding to the three metafunctions of language (ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function). Apart from the context of situation which is the immediate environment, there is also a broader background against which the text has to be interpreted: its context of culture. The context of culture is the institutional and ideological background that gives value to the text and constrains its interpretation.

In this paper, the theory of context of culture and context of situation will be briefly examined and an English TEXT and its two Chinese versions will be analyzed. It is not the aim of this short paper to build any translation theory in relation to discourse analysis, but rather to look into detailed analysis for areas where the discoursal theory of language can bring insights to English/Chinese translation.

Keywords: discourse analysis context of situation context of culturetranslation Correspondence: Department of English

School of Foreign Languages

Zhongshan University

Guangzhou,Guangdong 510275

P .R .China