Text and context in translation

While 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 received much less attention. In this paper, 1 make an attempt at rethinking the relationship between context and text for translation. 1 first review several conceptions of context and the relationship between text and context in a number of different disciplines. Secondly, 1 present a theory of translation which is to be understood as a theory of re-contextualization that explicates the relationship between context and text in its design and categorial scheme. Finally, 1 sketch a recent development in translation and multilingual text production, which may limit the scope of re-contextualization in translation. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.