Didactics of Translation: Text in Context

The social aspect of the model

As mentioned previously, Firth adopted the notion of ‘context of situation’ which had been put forward by Malinowski, and which refers not only to the “verbal environment” but also to the “situation in which the text is uttered”. However, Firth’s main contribution was to refine this notion so as to make it more abstract, more general; i.e. capable of covering the maximum number of situational elements which are necessary for the comprehension and production of texts. We recall that Firth’s features for the description of the context of situation are repeated below:
x the participants in the situation
x the action of the participants: what they are doing, including both their verbal and non-verbal action
x other relevant features of the situation: the surrounding objects

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  the effects of the verbal action
  

Building on Firth’s seminal ideas, Halliday introduced a set of contextual features, namely, field, tenor and mode. These constitute the elements of a model that is “most appropriate” for the description of the context of situation (Halliday 1989: 9).
With regard to the social aspect of his social model of translation, Kiraly has espoused Firth’s view concerning the description of the context of situation (CS) and has applied it to translation activity. Thus, according to Kiraly, the translator is seen as “an active participant in three interrelated contexts of situation: the CS1 of the original text, the CS2 in which the translated text will be embedded and the CS3 in which the translator resides while translating.” To illustrate this triple participation, the following adapted representation is suggested by Kiraly:

Figure 1: The participation of the translator in three contexts of situation

Within the CS3, the professional translator, according to Kiraly, is subjected to a wide range of variable constraints relating to “the norms of the society within which the translator is working, the employer’s expectations concerning the form and function of the translation and the translator’s own understanding of the function of the translation being produced (Ibid).

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