Shanghai foreign language education press
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Thus one person's view of the translating procedure. But there is a caveat (a warning and a proviso). I have tended to assume a demanding and challenging $L text. One can admittedly find, somewhat artificially, translation problems in any text, any metaphor. Unfortunately, there are a great many run-of-the-mill texts that have to be translated which present few challenges once you have mastered their terminology, which carries you through into a series of frankly boring and monotonous successors. They become remotely challenging only if they are poorly written, or you have to skew the readership, i.e. translate for users at a different, usually lower, level of language and/or knowledge of the topic. Many staff translators complain of the wearisome monotony of texts written in a humdrum neutral to informal style, full of facts, low on descriptions, teetering on the edge of cliche; certainly my account of the translating process will appear largely irrelevant to them. Enterprising translators have to appeal to the research departments of their companies for more interesting papers, or themselves recommend important original foreign publications in their field for translation. Others transfer from, say, general administration to the human rights department of their international organisation to find something worthwhile to do. It is one of the numerous paradoxes of translation that a vast number of texts, far from being 'impossible', as many linguists and men of letters (not usually in agreement) still believe, are in fact easy and tedious and suitable for MAT (machine-aided translation) and even MT (machine translation) but still essential and vital, whilst other texts may be considered as material for a scholar, a researcher and an artist. I think that, academically, translation can be regarded as scholarship if: (1) the SL text is challenging and demanding, e.g., if it is concerned with the frontiers of knowledge (science, technology, social sciences) or if it is a literary 38 PRINCIPLES or philosophical text written in innovatory or obscure or difficult or ancient language, (2) the text evidently requires some interpretation, which should be indicated in the translator's preface, (3) the text requires additional explanation in the form of brief footnotes. I think translation 'qualifies 1 as research If: (1) it requires substantial academic research. (2) it requires a preface of considerable length, giving evidence of this research and stating the translator's approach to his original, (Bear in mind that all translated books should have translators' prefaces.) (3) the translated text is accompanied by an apparatus of notes, a glossary and a bibliography. Translation is most clearly art, when a poem is sensitively translated into a poem. But any deft 'transfusion 1 of an imaginative piece of writing is artistic, when it conveys the meaning through a happy balance or resolution of some of the tensions in the process. CHAPTER 4 Language Functions, Text-categories and Text-types I suggest that all translations are based implicitly on a theory of language (Jakobson, Firth and Wandmzska put it the other way round - rhey said a Theory of language is based on a theory of translation). Thus in some respects (only) any translation is an exercise in applied linguistics, I am taking Buhler's functional theory of language as adapted by Jakobson as the one that is most usefully applied to translating, According to Buhler, the three main functions of language are the expressive, the informative - he called it 'representation' - and the vocative ('appeal') functions: these are the main purposes of using language. tải về 2 Mb. Chia sẻ với bạn bè của bạn:
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