Approaches To Translation
翻译问题探索New Mark Chapter one The theory and the craft of translation
Translation theory derives from comparative linguistics, and within linguistics, it is mainly an aspect of semantics. All questions of semantics relate to translation theory.
Translation is a craft consisting in the attempt to replace a written message or statement in one language by the same message or statement in another language. Each exercise involves some kind of loss of meaning, due to a number of factors. Chapter two What is translation theory about
Translation theory's main concern is to determine appropriate translation methods for the widest possible range of texts or text-categories. Further, it provides a framework of principles, restricted rules and hints for translating and criticizing translations, a background for problem-solving.
Translation theory attempts to give some insight into the relation between thought, meaning and language; the universal, cultural and individual aspects of language and behaviour, the understanding of cultures; the interpretation of texts that may be clarified and even supplemented by way of translation.
Translation theory covers a wide range of pursuits, attempts always to be useful, to assist the individual t
ranslator both by stimulating him to write better and to suggest points of agreement on common translation problems.
Chapter three Thought, speech and translation
Inner speech is not the interior aspect of external speech--it is a function in itself. It is to a large extent thinking in pure meanings.
The primary activity, application and purpose of language in the mature adult is thinking, not speech or writing or communicating or expression. First, one cannot think for long without having words in one's mind. Secondly, even the most loquacious person spends most of her time thinking.
The relation between thought and speech is intermittent----thought sparks off speech, and speech is frequently an automatism, a reflex action, the response to a stimulus and only weakly the product of thought. Therefore, thought is closer to writing than to speaking, and in this sense, writing, arising from and controlled by thought, has primacy over speaking.
When one is translating orally, one only starts thinking, in the sense of inner speech, when one is lost for a word or meets some difficulty; when one writes a translation one is thinking all the time.
Thinking precedes speech and writing and therefore the main purpose of language is not to communicate.
less is more 翻译Speech is older and more widespread that writing and a child speaks before it writes. Having knowledge of a language, however, often precedes speaking, which requires additional accessory capacities.
Writing systems are originated in thought, moderated, socialized, made more communicative in speech, and then again mediated through thought. However, the most important reason for challenging the primacy of speech over writing is that
writing is much more closely related physically and mentally to thought than is speech.
Writing is permanent, it is used not necessarily because the addressee is inaccessible to speech.
All the world's most important thoughts and statements were probably written before they were spoken. Speech, however, is often a response to a stimulus and thought it is often preceded by thought.
Where writing is closest to thought, where the reader is listening in rather than being consciously addr
essed, the method of translation is normally "semantic". All forms of literature, the drama, since it is addressed to a spectator, might have to make most "concession" to communicative translation.
Chapter four Semantic translation and communicative translation
1. Semantic translation focuses primarily upon the semantic content of the source text and communicative translation focuses essentially upon the comprehension and response of receptors.
2. Communicative translation attempts to produce on its readers an effect as close as possible to that obtained on the readers of the original. Semantic translation attempts to render, as closely as the semantic and syntactic structures of the second language, the exact contextual meaning of the original.
3. Communicative translation addresses itself solely to the second reader, who does not anticipate difficulties or obscurities, and would expect a generous transfer of foreign elements into his own culture as well as his language where necessary. Semantic translation remains within the original culture and assists the reader only in its connotations if they constitute the essential human message of the text.
4. One basic difference between them is that where there is a conflict, the communicative translation must emphasize the "force" rather than the content of the message. The semantic translation would be more informative but less effective.
5. Communicative translation is usually likely to be smoother, simpler, clearer, more direct, more conventional, conforming to a particular register of language, tending to undertranslate. Semantic translation tends to be more complex, more awkward, more detailed, more concentrated , and pursues the thought--processes rather than the intention of the transmitter. It tends to be overtranslate.
There is no one communicative nor one semant ic method of translating a text---these are in fact widely overlapping bands of methods.
Communicative translation, however, is concerned mainly with the receptors, usually in the context of a language and cultural variety, while semantic translation is concerned with the transmitter usually as an individual, and often in contradiction both to his culture and to the norm of his language.
All translation remains a craft requiring a trained skill, continually renewed linguistic and non-linguistic knowledge and a deal of flair and imagination, as well as intelligence and above all common sense.Semantic translation, basically the work of one translator, is an art. Communicative translation, s
ometimes the product of a translator's team, is a craft.
The two concepts were formulated in opposition to the monistic theory that
translation is basically a means of communication or a manner of addressing one or more persons in the speaker's presence; that translation, like language, is purely a social phenomenon.
Translation rests on at least three dichotomies---the foreign and native cultures, the two languages, the writer and the translator respectively.
Admittedly, all translation must be in some degree both communicative and semantic, social and individual. It is a matter of difference of emphasis. In communicative translation, the only part of the meaning of the original which is rendered is the part which corresponds to the TL reader's understanding of the identical message.
One of the many problems of communicative translation is to decide to what extent one should simplify and therefore emphasize the basic message. A second is to strike a mean, to decide on the highest common factor of intelligence, knowledge and sensitivity possessed by the total readership----inevitably one thinks of communicative translation as mass communication. A third is precisely not to in
sult the intelligence of the readership, as the media often do. But the most important problem is the intuitive nature of communicative translation--the fact that its success can be measured only by investigating the reaction of the readers to whom it is addressed.
Semantic translation is an attempt to render, as closely as the semantic and syntactic structures of the target language allow, the exact contextual meaning of the original.
The basic difference between semantic and literal translatio n is that the former respects context, the latter does not. Semantic translation sometimes has to interpret, even explain a metaphor, if it is meaningless in the target language. In semantic translation, the translator's first loyalty is to his author, while in literal translation, his loyalty is, on the whole, to the norms of the source language.

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