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内容提要
霍姆斯的这篇文章一直被翻译研究界视为具有划时代的重要意义。两千多年以来，人们对翻译的方方面面进行了不懈的探讨，但对翻译研究作为一门学科的研究对象、研究范围以及研究方法却不甚明了，或莫衷一是。首先，霍姆斯提出将翻译研究（Translation Studies ）作为学科的称谓，并强调翻译研究是一门经验学科，研究对象是翻译活动（过程）和翻译作品；翻译研究的功能是不仅要探讨如何翻译，同时还要描述翻译现象和行为，解释、甚至预测未来的翻译。更重要的是，霍姆斯第一次详尽地描绘出翻译研究的结构图（见下页）。
对照这个图可以发现，翻译研究的领域比我们传统想像的要宽阔得多。黑体是我国研究较为深入的领域，而下划线表示还有待加强。此外，还有一些未开垦的处女地。这个结构图同时表示了翻译研究自下而上的发展路径：首先
作者简介
詹姆斯·霍姆斯（James Holmes )，著名的翻译理论家。生于美国艾奥瓦中部，曾就读于威廉·潘学院和布朗大学；1949年作为富布赖特交换教师到荷兰国际学院任教，1950年移居阿姆斯特丹，以自由编辑和诗歌翻译为业。1956年以非本族语使用者身份荣获翻译大奖，1964年任阿姆斯特丹大学翻译研究高级讲师。发表多篇有关翻译的论文，《翻译研究名与实》（The Name and Nature of Translation Studies, 1972)第一次比较完整系统地界定了翻译研究作为一个跨学科的研究领域，成为当代翻译研究划时代的重要文献，得到国际译界的普遍认可。本篇选自James Holmes 的Translated! Papers on Literary and Translation Studies ，由Rodopi 出版社于1994年出版。
第一章
翻译研究名与实
The Name and Nature of Translation Studies 1  James S. Holmes
当代西方翻译研究原典选读
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翻译史与翻译研究方法论
是翻译实践和翻译活动本身，然后是对翻译现象的客观描述，然后是概括出规律，形成翻译原则，抽象成为翻译理论。霍姆斯不仅对每一个领域进行了详细说明，还特别强调翻译史与翻译研究方法论属于元理论，虽然没有包括在结构图之中，但属于翻译研究的重要组成部分。
尽管个别翻译理论家对霍姆斯的结构图有所保留，同时社会的发展，特别是计算机的出现也不断地丰富和补充翻译研究结构图，但霍姆斯提出的学科名称、研究领域和研究的性质与方法，已经被译界同仁普遍认可和接受，成为翻译学科研究的基础。
关键词：翻译研究；纯翻译研究；应用翻译研究；描述翻译研究
原典选读
1.1
“SCIENCE,” MICHAEL MULKAY points out, “tends to proceed by means of discovery of new areas of ignorance.” 2 The process by which this takes place has been fairly well defined by the sociologists of science and research.3 As a new problem or set of problems comes into view in the world of learning, there is an
第一章翻译研究名与实influx of researchers from adjacent areas, bringing with them the paradigms and models that have proved fruitful in their own fields. These paradigms and models
are then brought to bear on the new problem, with one of two results. In some situations the problem proves amenable to explicitation, analysis, explication, and
at least partial solution within the bounds of one of the paradigms or models, and in
that case it is annexed as a legitimate branch of an established field of study. In other situations the paradigms or models fail to produce sufficient results, and researchers become aware that new methods are needed to approach the problem.
In the second type of situation, the result is a tension between researchers investigating the new problem and colleagues in their former fields, and this tension
can gradually lead to the establishment of new channels of communication and the development of what has been called a new disciplinary utopia, that is, a new sense
of a shared interest in a common set of problems, approaches, and objectives on
the part of a new grouping of researchers. As W. O. Hagstrom has indicated, these
two steps, the establishment of communication channels and the development of
a disciplinary utopia, “make it possible for scientists to identify with the emerging discipline and to claim legitimacy for their point of view when appealing to university bodies or groups in the larger society.” 4
1.2
Though there are no doubt a few scholars who would object, particularly among the linguists, it would seem to me clear that in regard to the complex of problems clustered round the phenomenon of translating and translations,5 the second situation now applies. After centuries of incidental and desultory attention from a scattering of authors, philologians, and literary scholars, plus here and there
a theologian or an idiosyncratic linguist, the subject of translation has enjoyed a marked and constant increase in interest on the part of scholars in recent years, with
the Second World War as a kind of turning point. As this interest has solidified and expanded, more and more scholars have moved into the field, particularly from the adjacent fields of linguistics, linguistic philosophy, and literary studies, but also from such seemingly more remote disciplines as information theory, logic, and mathematics, each of them carrying with him paradigms, quasi-paradigms, models,
and methodologies that he felt could be brought to bear on this new problem.
At first glance, the resulting situation today would appear to be one of great confusion, with no consensus regarding the types of models to be tested, the kinds
of methods to be applied, the varieties of terminology to be used. More than that,
2
当代西方翻译研究原典选读
2 there is not even likemindedness about the contours of the field, the problem set, the discipline as such. Indeed, scholars are not so much as agreed on the very name for the new field.
Nevertheless, beneath the superficial level, there are a number of indications that for the field of research focusing on the problems of translating and translations Hagstrom’s disciplinary utopia is taking shape. If this is a salutary development (and I believe that it is), it follows that it is worth our while to further the development by consciously turning our attention to matters that are serving to impede it.
1.3
One of these impediments is the lack of appropriate channels of communication. For scholars and researchers in the field, the channels that do exist still tend to run via the older disciplines (with their attendant norms in regard to models, methods, and terminology), so that papers on the subject of tran
slation are dispersed over periodicals in a wide variety of scholarly fields and journals for practising translators. It is clear that there is a need for other communication channels, cutting across the traditional disciplines to reach all scholars working in the field, from whatever background.
2.1
But I should like to focus our attention on two other impediments to the development of a disciplinary Utopia. The first of these, the lesser of the two in importance, is the seemingly trivial matter of the name for this field of research. It would not be wise to continue referring to the discipline by its subject matter as has been done at this conference, for the map, as the General Semanticists constantly remind us, is not the territory, and failure to distinguish the two can only further confusion.
Through the years, diverse terms have been used in writings dealing with translating and translations, and one can find references in English to “the art” or “the craft” of translation, but also to the “principles” of translation, the “fundamentals” or the “philosophy”. Similar terms recur in French and German. In some cases the choice of term reflects the attitude, point of approach, or background of the writer; in others it has been determined by the fashion of the moment in scholarly terminology.
第一章翻译研究名与实There have been a few attempts to create more “learned” terms, most of them w
ith the highly active disciplinary suffix -ology. Roger Goffin, for instance,
has suggested the designation “translatology” in English, and either its cognate or traductologie in French.6 But since the -ology suffix derives from Greek, purists reject a contamination of this kind, all the more so when the other element is
not even from Classical Latin, but from Late Latin in the case of translatio or Renaissance French in that of traduction. Yet Greek alone offers no way out, for “metaphorology”, “metaphraseology”, or “metaphrastics” would hardly be of aid to
us in making our subject clear even to university bodies, let alone to other “groups
in the larger society.”7 Such other terms as “translatistics” or “translistics”, both of which have been suggested, would be more readily understood, but hardly more acceptable.
2.2.1
Two further, less classically constructed terms have come to the fore in recent years. One of these began its life in a longer form, “the theory of translating” or “the theory of translation” (and its corresponding forms: “Theorie des Übersetzens”,
“théorie de la traduction”). In English (and in German) it has since gone the way
of many such terms, and is now usually compressed into “translation theory”
(Übersetzungstheorie). It has been a productive designation, and can be even more
so in future, but only if it is restricted to its proper meaning. For, as I hope to make clear in the course of this paper, there is much valuable study and research being done in the discipline, and a need for much more to be done, that does not, strictly speaking, fall within the scope of theory formation.
scholars
2.2.2
The second term is one that has, to all intents and purposes, won the
field in German as a designation for the entire discipline.8 This is the term
Übersetzungswissenschaft, constructed to form a parallel to Sprachwissenschaft, Literaturwissenschaft, and many other Wissenschaften. In French, the comparable designation, “science de la traduction”, has also gained ground, as have parallel terms in various other languages.
One of the first to use a parallel-sounding term in English was Eugene Nida, who in 1964 chose to entitle his theoretical handbook Towards a Science
of Translating.9 It should be noted, though, that Nida did not intend the phrase
as a name for the entire field of study, but only for one aspect of the process of translating as such.10 Others, most of them not native speakers of English, have been
2

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