Rethinking the Relationship between Text and Context in Translation

Juliane House

《翻譯學報》 9卷1期 (2006/06) Pp. 77-103

摘要

Research on texts as units larger than sentences has a rich tradition in translation studies. The notion of context, its relation to text, and the role it plays in translation has, however, received much less attention. In this paper, I have made a fresh attempt at conceptualising the relationship between context and text for translation and presented a new theory of re-contextualisation that explicates the relationship between context and text in its design and its categorial scheme. A growing influence which may threaten traditional processes of re-contextualisation in translation, i.e. the increasing influence of English as a global lingua franca on translation and on addressee expectation norms in other language communities and cultures, is also discussed.