【7月2日】孙艺风：Situational Transfer and Recontextualization in Translation

Translation is an act of interpretation shaped by context—meaning does not reside in isolated words or phrases but emerges from the interplay of language, culture, and situation. A contextualized approach treats the text as a communicative act embedded in its social and pragmatic surroundings. The process I call situational transfer addresses translation challenges by correlating the situation presented in the source text with a reconstructed equivalent in the target language. This paper explores how situational translation works in both in-context and out-of-context practices, arguing that context does not merely inform meaning-making but actively transforms it. The underlying premise is that translation entails recontextualization: meaning cannot be separated from the situation in which it is produced, interpreted, and received. By examining how translators adapt and reconstruct the original context in the target language, the paper demonstrates how situational awareness mediates the transfer of meaning across linguistic and cultural boundaries.