译者在翻译时应时刻保持语境意识。本文把Hatim和Mason提出语境三个层面理论作为理论基础,指导肢体语言的翻译。表面上非言语交际描述的翻译是文本间的翻译,而实质上是两个不同非言语系统之间的转换。本文全面阐述了非言语交际的定义,特征,研究状况并探究了肢体语言翻译中存在的问题：一是缺乏对非言语交际中文化信息的意识;二是忽视了上下文中非言语交际描述的功能。因此,如何提高译者翻译肢体语言时的语境意识是本文的核心。

Chapter Four Approaches to Body Language Translation

4.1 Communicative Approach to Body Language Translation

The communicative level of context in Hatim and Mason s theory derived directly from

Halliday s register analysis. Corder (1973) continued the study of the user-related dimension and named the varieties in this dimension dialect. As for the use-related dimension, Gregory and Carrol (1978) did further researches on it and employed the word “register” as the term to describe the variables in this dimension. Dialects show differences among language users while registers display the differences among the forms of languages such as grammar and lexis. Dialect can be further divided into some sub-categories according to various standards.

4.1.1 User-related Varieties一Dialect

Language varieties related to the user are named dialects, including geographical,

temporal, social, non-standard and idiolectal dialects, etc. As for body language, its language varieties are mainly embodied on the levels of geographical, temporal and social dialects, which will be expounded as follows.

(1) Geographical Dialect. Language varieties correspond to geographical variation, giving

rise to different geographical dialects. For example:

The young girl thumbed her way to the passing cars.

那个年轻姑娘站在路边向过往的汽车摆动着竖起的拇指表示要搭车。

The nonverbal behavior “thumb one s way to” is used by English-speaking people to the

passing cars to have a hitchhike. However, in China; we do not have this gesture. That is, this gesture belongs to geographical dialect. To avoid confusion and transfer cultural information successfully, the translation strategy of adding explanation is adopted and“表示要搭车”is added.

Equally, in Chinese, there are some general body language descriptions which have no

absolute lexical counterparts in the target language.

(2) Temporal Dialect. Temporal dialect reflects the development of language through time.

Facing temporal dialects of the past, the translator may hesitate between choosing modern language or the language of the past in translation and may face the dilemma of whether