Shanghai foreign language education press
THE INTENTION OF THE TEXT
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| THE INTENTION OF THE TEXT
In reading, you search for the intention of the text, you cannot isolate this from understanding it, they go together and the title may be remote from the content as well as the intention. Two texts may describe a battle or a riot or a debate, stating the same facts and figures, but the type of ianguageused and even the grammatical structures (passive voice, impersonal verbs often used to disclaim rcsponsibilitv) in each case may be evidence of different points of view. The intention of the text represents the SL writer's attitude to the subject matter. A piece about floors may be 'pushing 1 floor polishes; about newspapers, a condemnation of the press; about nuclear weapons, an advertisement for them -always there is a point of view, somewhere, a modal component to the proposition, perhaps in a word- * unfortunately', 'nevertheless', 'hopefully 1 , What is meant by 'That was clever of him 1 ? Is it ironical, openly or implicitly? {In a text showing that BBC Radio 2 is a pale imitation of commercial radio, the irony may only be implicit and obscure to a non-British reader, and the translator may want to make the point more explicitly,) "CUmenie, noire justice repressive?*, writes a journalist meaning L Our repressive judicial system is far from lenient 1 , or is it a bluff, mainly nonsense, for amusement? It may be 'iceberg 1 work to find out, since the tone mav come through in a literal translation, but the translator has to be aware of it, Again, in a detailed, confused piece about check-ups on elderly patients who may have to undergo chemotherapy the author's intention is to show that patients must have a thorough physical check-up before they start a course of drugs: if physical problems are cleared up first, there may be no need for psychiatry. A summary of this nature, which uses only a few key words from the original, appears to be isolated from the language, simply to show what happens in real life, and it is indispensable to the translator. But he still has to 'return 1 to the text. He still has to translate the text, even if he has to simplify, rearrange, clarify, slim it of its redundancies, pare it down. tải về 2 Mb. Chia sẻ với bạn bè của bạn:
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