摘 要：
关键词：
1. Introduction
Context is of fundamental significance in language study.Since context has a close relationship with comprehension of meaning and language use,it is a new promising development to discuss the dynamic function of context in translation. Translation involves the transformation of two languages in communicating and expressing.Context is indispensable to translation so is literary translation. In the process of literary translation,only the translator take into consideration the SL text according to its dynamic context,will the translator successfully convey the SL writer’s intended meaning to TL readers and present a good piece of translation.In studying context, it is highly necessary to note that context is dynamic not static.Only by the dynamic analysis of context can be the context play the explanatory and constraint function in the language communication.
Equivalent effect theory is one of the important translation theories that have been studied by many translators and translation theorists.Eugene A Nida put forth “dynamic equivalence”in his Toward a Science of Translating (1964).For Nida, translation equivalence can be achieved only if a translation fulfills the conditions of the closest natural equivalence to the source language text.Basically,dynamic equivalence is based on the principle of equivalent effect,that is, the message of the original language will be so transported into the receptor language that the response of the receptor is essentially like that of the original receptors.In reconstructing the meaning from the SL into the TL,a translator is constantly searching for corresponding equivalents between the two languages, and such a process is inseparable from the specific linguistic context in which the language is used.
2. The Dynamic Function of Linguistic Context in The Border Town
The Border Town is one of the successful literary works by the noted Chinese writer Shen Congwen.Whether such a novel can be fully understood and then strike a chord in the target readers’heart depends on the translator.A good translator can detect the interior and exterior information of the novel,and then convey the information into the target readers within the context.So in translation, the translator should try to create the necessary linguistic context,which is familiar to the target readers so that they can understand the source text easily.
2.1 Grammatical Context
Grammatically speaking, English and Chinese each has its individual and distinctive system.On the one hand, there are some similarities between these two languages,as in word order of subject and predicate and that of transitive verb and object;on the other hand,there are lots of dissimilarities between them both in morphology and in syntax.The sentences in Chinese are paratactic,usually organized in a structure of theme-rhyme,clauses arranged without logical markers;while in English,the sentences are hypotactic with subject-object structure, clauses strictly arranged according to the logical relation.So these differences make it necessary to rearrange the sentence structure in translation,as shown in the following example:
“又要马儿不吃草，又要马儿走得好”，
I want a sweetheart to listen to my songs,but I n
eed a good wife who’ll manage my household well.
According to the linguistic context,the Chinese idiom in this example means that he wants a good wife and sweetheart.Yang translates it with some explanation in order to transfer the implied meaning of the sentence to the target readers.
沈从文（2002），《边城》，山西：北岳文艺出版社。
