通天塔之后：語言與翻譯面面觀

After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation通天塔之后語言與翻譯面面觀 Subject：Translation theory and practice Tutor: Yukun Bu Author: Ying Ma Major: Foreign Linguistics and Applied LinguisticsNumber: After Babel: Aspects of Language and TranslationYing Ma(Foreign Language College, Jilin University，Changchun )摘 要：喬治斯坦納所著的通天塔之后-語言與翻譯面面觀1975年首次出版，系統(tǒng)地描述了自18 世紀(jì)以來的翻譯理論。即使今日該書在翻譯領(lǐng)域仍占有不可取代的重要地位，所提出的觀點(diǎn)仍有深遠(yuǎn)影響。其中重要兩點(diǎn)是：喬治斯坦納提出的理解即翻譯，這也是全書及其理論的基調(diào)；另一點(diǎn)是四步驟理論。本文主要從四步驟理論（即，信任、入侵、吸收和補(bǔ)償）探討了譯者在翻譯過程中的主體性，并以此來分析冰心的譯文。體現(xiàn)了翻譯過程中譯者主體性的重要作用。關(guān)鍵詞：理解；闡釋學(xué)；四步驟理論 IntroductionIn linguistic research, firstly Steiner adopted diachronic and synchronic and pointed out language is in the process of dynamic. During this procedure, Hermeneutics and translation exist from start to the end and as a means to realize communication. Steiners research is from overall perspective, from Plato to Aristotle, from Humboldt to Saussure then Chomsky. In the light of school, Steiner thought translation as an art rather than science, it is not science and difficult to be in its later development for the lack of linguistic support to translation research. This book talked about translation between different languages, divided into 6 parts: understanding as translation, language and Gnosis, word against object, the claim of theory, the hermeneutic motion. This paper discusses translators role in the process of translation mainly from the perspective of George Steiners fourfold the hermeneutic motion: “trust”（信任）“aggression”(入侵)“import”(輸入) and “compensation”(補(bǔ)償). George Steiner takes the reader through the history, theory and justification of translation in this challenging book. His book is divided into six sections. In Understanding as Translation, he explains that since language is used to imperfectly express thoughts and ideas, all speech is translation. Language and Gnosis addresses the reasons behind the surprising and seemingly counterintuitive diversity of languages. Word and Object covers a variety of subjects, including the sounds native to a language and the purpose (if any) of falsity in expression. The Claims of Theory traces the history of translation theory, with some very helpful comments on Chomskyan linguistics. The Hermeneutic Motion gives examples and detailed analysis of various triumphs and failures of translation. Topologies of Culture closes with a look at all imitative art as translation and a conjecture about the future need for translation in light of English as a world language. Although this book is written in English, the author cites text in French and German extensively, and a reader unfamiliar with these languages will miss out on some passages. Professor Steiners selected bibliography and extensive footnotes offer a decades worth of further reading for those who are interested in following up on some of the ideas. Understanding As TranslationThe implication of the translator “exact art” in every aspect of comparative literary and cultural studies is the object of study and teaching. By salutary paradox, moreover, Anglo-American masters, notably among the poets, are themselves more and more turning to translation. It is as if the plenary dominion of their privileged world speech entails growing responsibilities towards the genius of more constructed national traditions and sensibilities whether by direct or interposed means. British and American writers are translating across a whole gamut of tongues, stretching from Russian and Japanese to Portuguese.For the above reasons, in the first chapter, George Steiner stated his argument “understanding as translation”. As a translator, you have to know what the writer is saying and then add your understanding into new version to present to the readers. In this case, actually, the translator is the first reader of an essay, and only can he understand well first, then to interpret the codes between languages. The first chapter of George Steiners works After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation is named Understanding as Translation. Steiner thinks that an exercise in total reading is also potentially understands. (Steiner，2001:8), which shows that it is not easy to understand the internal element of language, even the same language. He thinks that when reading or hearing anything happened before, we are all in the process of translating. This opinion is accordance with Roman Jakobsons classification: intralingual translation, interlingual translation, and intersemiotic translation. Steiner also thinks that the producing and understanding of language are the process of translating actually. He argues that translation is the basic factor of language. We can infer that understanding the past is to translate the past into the present; and understanding the foreign means to translate the foreign into the local. We can translate the past, so we can carry on our civilization; as well as we can translate the foreign, so we can absorb the essence of others.2.1 Understanding in Play Translation To start with, George Steiner quoted a paragraph from Shakespeares Cymbeline to illustrate his statement. Sustained grammatical analysis is necessary and cuts deep. But glossary and syntax are only instruments. The main task for the “complete reader” is too establish, so far as he is able, the full intentional quality of monologue, first within the play, secondly in what is known of Shakespearean and Elizabethan dramatic conventions, and, most difficult of all, within the large context of early seventeenth-century speech-habits. What is involved here is the heart of the interpretative process. In seeking to apprehend Posthumuss meaning, and his own relations to such meaning, we attempt to determine the relevant “tone-values” or “valuations”.One thing is clear: every language-act has a temporal determinant. No semantic form is timeless. When using a word we wake into resonance, as it were, its entire previous history. A text is embedded in specific historical time; it has what linguists call a diachronic structure. To read fully is to restore all that one can of the immediacies of value and intent in which speech actually occurs.Thus a human being performs an act of translation in the full sense of the word, when receiving a speech-message from any other human being. Time, distance, disparities in outlook or assumed reference, make this act more or less difficult. Where the difficult is great enough, the process passes from relax to conscious technique. Intimacy, on the other hand, be it of hatred or of love, can be defined as confident, quasi-immediate translation.2.2 Understanding in Interlingual TranslationIn the first chapter, George Steiner has been trying to state a rudimentary but decisive point: interlingual translation is the main concern of this book, but it is also a way in, an access to an inquiry into language itself. “Translation” properly understood, is a special case of the arc of communication which every successful speech-act closes within a given language. On the inter-lingual level, translation will pose concerned, visibly intractable problems, but these same problems abound, at a more covert or conventionally neglected level, intra-lingual. The model “sender to receiver” which represents any semiological and semantic process is onto logically equivalent to the model “source-language to receptor-language” used in the theory of translation. In both schemes there is “in the middle” an operation of interpretative decipherment, an encoding-decoding function or synapse. Where two or more languages are in articulate interconnection, the barriers in the middle will obviously be more salient, and the enterprise of intelligibility more conscious. But the “motion of spirit”, to use Dantes phrase, are rigorously analogous. So as we shall see, the most frequent causes of misunderstanding or, what is the same, are of failure to translation correctly. In short: inside or between languages, human communication equals translation. A study of translation is a study of language. (George Steiner，2001:49)For example, any bilingual translator is acquainted with the phenomenon of “false friends”-homonyms such as French habit and English habit which on occasion might , but almost never do, have the same meaning or mutually untranslatable cognates such as English home and German heim. The translator within has to cope with subtler treasons. Words rarely show any outward mark of altered meaning, they body forth their history only in a fully established context. Where a passage is historically remote, say In Chaucer, the business of internal translation tends toward being a bilingual process: eye and ear are kept alert to the necessity of decipherment. As William James observed, “natural selection for efficient communication” may have been achieved at a considerable cost. 2.3 Understanding from Differences between Languages The dramatic differences between languages made translation hermeneutics necessary. Take Chinese and English as examples.Different from English, Chinese characters depict meaning. The unique feature of Chinese characters that bear the three functions of shape, sound and meaning together makes this language more flexible and convenient for the formation, linearity and aggregation of structured meaning (translated by the author) For example, the Chinese“火”both have the meaning of fire and the image of afire burning.On the other hand, English and many other western languages differ from Chinese in that words manifest sounds. Even Steiner himself wrote in his preface to the 3rd edition “Chinese remains a formidable but inwardly focused rival”. The characters shape, sound and meaning conjures in an arbitrary way; the connection between words and ideas indirect. people pay more attention on how it sounds when using this language.”(ibid, 42) Even if one has ample knowledge of both languages, he would still feel at loss when faced with the non-correspondence of meaning. More often than not, he might find that he is short of words, not because he cant find it, but because there isnt any at all to correspond the exact meaning that the word project. This is especially the case when cultural vocabulary is involved. For example, when translating the word“阿彌陀佛!”Here, we can translate it as Amitabha, or Buddha bless you, or God bless you. The transliterate Amitabha retains the sound, but does not convey anything meaningful to target text readers who do not know about Buddhism. Buddha bless you sounds unnatural to native speaker; while God bless you is natural English, it changes the religious realm. The Hermeneutic Motion.3.1 Introductions to HermeneuticsWhat is hermeneutics? The question needs first clarification first before we start the main topic of the thesis. According to the definition in Encyclopedia Britannica, hermeneutics is “the study of methodological principles of interpretation (as of the Bible)”. So we can see that hermeneutics, briefly speaking, can be defined as the science and methodology of interpreting texts. Hermeneutics appeared firstly as the interpretation of the Bible，i.e. the process of discovering meaning from the Bible. Firstly, translation practice of the Bible directly led to the question of how to explore meaning of text; thus came Biblical Hermeneutics. Secondly, Schleiermacher from Classical Hermeneutics took the view that final meaning existed and that an author possessed absolute authority. In this light, translator ought to understand both the meaning of the text and that of the author.Classical Hermeneutics was no longer merely a text study tool; instead, it became a philosophy method. A separation of study objects was clear as both Translation and Hermeneutics developed on their own.Thirdly came Heidegger and his student Gadamer, two representatives of Philosophical Hermeneutics. Different from the first and second stage, they denied the final meaning of a text. To them, every reading was a new translation. Together they switched the direction of searching from a pure objective meaning to an understanding is translating attitude, thus signifies the subjectivity of translator by switching translator from a spectator to a major player. Notice that here understanding became the most fundamental goal and task of Hermeneutics.George Steiner borrowed Philosophical Hermeneutics theory and used it to explain various phenomena of translation for both inter and intra languages. Thus, Translation and Hermeneutics re-cooperate for a better understanding of Translation theory and practice.The evolvement of Hermeneutics together with its relationship with translation can be illustrated in the chart below.Figure 1 The development of HermeneuticsAs far as the terms of the fourfold steps are concerned, Steiner gives several different versions in his book such as the fourfold hermeneutic motion (Steiner, 2001:312), the first move (ibid: 371), the final stage or movement (ibid: 415), and the Fourfold Hermeneutics Translation Motion Theory. George Steiner breaks the translation into four solid stages: trust, penetration (aggression), embodiment (incorporation) and restitution (compensation). This thesis will use the very first term Steiner presents: the fourfold hermeneutic motion.TrustCompensationWriterSource textTranslatorTarget textReaderAggressionIncorporationSubjectivityFigure 2 The four stages of translation3.2 The First Stage of Translation: Trust First of all, before reading and translating, the translator will undergo a procedure called initiative trust consciously or unconsciously. This is the first move of translation, which is an investment of belief, underwritten by previous experience but epistemologically exposed and psychologically hazardous, in the meaningfulness, in the seriousness of the facing or, strictly speaking, adverse text (Steiner, 2001:312). In any translation process, the first move of the translator is to choose the text that he will translate. The choice is probably made out of his own interest or preference, under the influence of the translation agency or even out of certain political and social purposes. No matter which original text the translator chooses, he himself believes and trusts that there must be something meaningful and sensible to be translated. Keeping such trust inmind, the translator will try his best to reproduce the source text. In this sense, initiative trust is not only the first move of hermeneutic motion, but also the basis of translation. The trust, on one hand, comes from human beings fore-understanding. On the other hand, it also bases on the thoughts of philosophy, anthropology, even archaeology, which convict that the similarities between men are finally much greater than the differences. (ibid: 372) However, Steiner points out that this trust is not absolute. And the extent of initiative trust, i.e. how much the translator trusts the source text, is differed due to different text types and translating purposes. For example, if there is nothing to elicit and translate in source text, such as nonsense, trust is hard to achieve. Religious and technical translations always tend to understand the meaning of source text literally while literary translators dont stick to the literal meanings.3.3 The Second Stage of Translation: AggressionAggression as the second motion in translation process means the translators perception and understanding of the text, which as Steiner (2001:428) says is always partial. Therefore, he holds that understanding in translation is an unavoidable mode of attack and an aggression to the original intention of the author. Saint Jerome uses his famous image to depict how translators bring home meanings in other languages: they break a code; decipherment is dissective, leaving the shell smashed and the vital layers stripped. This is what makes understanding aggressive. A translator, at this point, is a reader, He is different because he has to understand, if not the deepest, he must be much deeper than an average reader. In order to bring home the most meaning he can get, he attacks, breaking the shell of the other language and trying his best to capture the inner core of it, because the serious understanding here is no simply a matter of words and structure, but the history and culture within it. Every culture has its own characteristics which differ from other culture by the custom, tradition, history and the way of thinking. When a translator translated one language to another, he must take away or change something of the original text which he considers unnecessary or unsuitable to make the readers understand. For example, I have had my invitation to This worlds festival, and thus my life has been blessed. My eyes have seen and my ears have heard. (譯文:我接到這世界節(jié)日的請柬，我的生命受了祝強(qiáng)。我的眼睛看見了美麗的景象，我的耳朵也聽見了醉人的音樂。)(冰心:2007:24-25)3.4 The Third Stage of Translation: IncorporationAfter the aggression or the utmost understanding of the source text, the translator must then face the confrontation of the two different languages. Specifically, with the meaning and spirit in his head, how can he import the meaning as well as form from another culture using the local language? Steiner divides the translators incorporation or appropriation of the original into two general categories: incorporation of meaning semantic incorporation of form. According to him, the native of the translator exerts considerable influences on his import of meaning and form of the original. Steiner says: what I have called the third move in the hermeneutic of appropriation, the portage home of the foreign sense and its domestication in the new linguistic-cultural matrix