Topic: OnContextual Adequacy inExternalPublicity Translation
Time:15:00-17:00,June19,2015
Venue: A421,Building 6
Participants:Doctoral students, teaching staff and senior visiting scholars
Chairperson:Pro. Zeng Lisha
Speaker: DengWei & Pro. Zeng Lisha
Recorder inEnglish: Shao Xingyu
The forum started with apresentation delivered by Deng Wei, Ph.D candidate, on the topic of “On Contextual Adequacy in External Publicity Translation”. She first gave a brief summary of the previous studies about context made by Malinnowsky, Firth and Halliday, and then presented her own categorizationo f contexts: locutionary context, illocutionary context, linguistic context,situational context and cognitive context, which can be static or dynamic. Her focus was placed on the conception of contextual adequacy in external publicity translation from six aspects: presupposed meaning, associative meaning,pragmatic intention, style, theme and lexical connotation. Ms. Deng concluded her presentation by giving a brief introduction of subsidiary principles and operational rules.
The forum continued with Professor Zeng Lisha’s comments on Deng’s presentation that the classification was reasonable and the examples selected were typical.He pointed out that translators tend to choose the appropriate words in external publicity translation with a certain intention, which is also a kind of parameters that is closely related to the theme of the discourse or text. He held that the meaning is generated by the context and textual meaning can create context, so different contexts can generate different meanings.According to him, making scientific research means conducting research more systematically. When one applies others’ examples, one should analyze them more explicitly and should integrate them into his/her own theoretical framework, enabling the research to have both subjective judgment and objective motivation. Then, Professor Zeng delivered an insightful speech entitled “On the Concept in Qualitative Analysis of‘Contextual Adequacy’ in External Publicity Translation”. He elaborated on what is context, and explained various kinds of research methodologies, like top-down, bottom-up, deduction, induction. Furthermore, by demonstrating a number of typical case analyses, Professor Zeng clarified the modal characteristics of concept connotation and the intentionality of diction.
The end of the forum witnessed a heateddiscussion and exchange of ideas on the topic presented and on the scientificways of doing academic researches. The forum proved to be an attractiveacademic gathering and all the participants are looking forward to the nextone.