酷我-北美枫

[timmid]

Towards the Myth of Oneness in Translation

The complexity of translation, the most complex thing in the history of the cosmos, lies in the multitude of and the delicate relationship among its relevant factors centering around text (as Newmark’s pulling of ten directions indicates) or the author, the translator and the reader respectively. Translation is universally viewed as a verbal communication among the author, the translator and the reader. Then its context is by no means innocent: all the three may find themselves in an unsystematic system or a concert of discordant elements let alone the pulls and pushes among them. Without the guide of a belief, early translators found themselves lost in the labyrinth of translation wherein random treatments of the original became their last but inevitable resort. Meanwhile, all the beliefs of later translation theorists seem to disturb the previous equilibrium, by neglecting some of these relevant factors, so as to make translation simple enough to manage. The myth of oneness is the crystal and ideal of such sythetical approaches: by a mystical orgasmic relationship, the translator and the writer cease to exist as separate entities and become one. Still so will the translator, the writer and the reader do. Virtually, this fusion---in a sense, means a successful translation- is obtained in three ways: 1). The translator and the reader move towards the writer who remains in peace. 2). The writer and the translator move towards the reader who remains in peace. 3). The writer and the reader move towards the translator who remains in peace.
The influence religious belief exercises on translation somehow brings the original sort of mystic flavor and consequently elevates the source text to the status of bible, the writer that of the oracle. In light of this metaphysics of presence, the god-given virtue of the original should be represented to the most in translation. As for the translator, all things are complete within him, what he need do is to cultivate himself, thus to know his mind and nature, and thus to understand Heaven (郭尚兴 1993：15), then, facing the original, he still has to exercise his mind to the most by decoding and inferring, to find out the implicature from the explicature of the original by means of all the communication clues available at all levels of phonology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics etc. the more empathy the translator has, the more likely he will integrate with the writer.

Thus, the original becomes the source and the ultimate destination of translation. Through trust, aggression, incorporation and restitution, the translation has good reason to achieve a fusion with the original, which in turn, ensures the divinity and eternity of its existence.

With this as the doctrine, most translation theories, despite different approaches, are respectively unified by a source-oriented conceptual framework which assumes original presence and a representation of it in the target society through some notion f equivalence: the same aesthetic experience, linguistic structural\dynamic equivalence, corresponding literary function or similar formal correlation governed by acceptability in the target culture (Gentzler 1993:145)

In consequence, this worship of oneness leads to rigid distinctions between the original text and its translation, distinctions which determine evaluation of translation. Absolute fidelity to the original unavoidably results in the invisibility of the translator, which in fact is perceived as the very achievement. However, despite the entire translator’s efforts, the master-slave relationship between the original text and its translation (the author and the translator) foreshadows the impossibility of oneness even at the sacrifice of the translator. Translation is viewed as a betrayal and ranked the lowest in the hierarchy of literary polysystem.

The translator vanished, the communication is simplified into direct confrontation of the writer and the reader, or in a sense the SL system and the TL system. However, can this face-to-face communication end up in further oneness, which can ensure a successful translation? The exploration of underlying bases for human communication may still present a tug of war between limiting factors that “no two people employ precisely the same symbols for the same type of experience, nor do they employ the same symbols in exactly the same ways” and factors that enable effective communication including “the similarity of mental process, somatic responses, range of cultural experience, and capacity for adjustment to the behavior patterns of others” (Liao Qiyi 1994:189). Is the pull towards the similarity t come r just otherwise? Nida’s adjustment of communication channel seems to be a satisfactory solution for most issues in question, yet he at least overlooks the following facts:

1). Communication is a two-way (instead of one-way) dynamic process with confrontations and negotiations between the participants. This, in translation, a cross-cultural communication, though does not necessarily mean that the translator starts again from the very beginning when something is mistranslated, it does mean a mutual communicating between the original and its translation. In such a way, multiple translations are justified.

2). All messages are ambiguous and fussy. This is true especially with literary works, the meaning of which lies at least at three levels (see the following figure): a). Meaning, which is comparatively definite and salient enough to grasp. B). Intention or intended effects, which embodies the pushes and pulls between tradition and writer’s creation, and denies any easy comprehension though it somehow leaves traces through the writer’s deviation from language norms. C). Spirit, which is a dynamic fusion of both culture and the writer’s originality, and is the most unapproachable for it triggers (as the writer always intends) varieties of comprehension.

Even simple message can never keep intact after transferal, not to speak such complicated entity, and thus no communication can guarantee 100 percent correspondence between input and output.
The notion of effective communication gives certain translatability by locating the oneness somewhere between the SL system and the TL system, yet virtually always closer to one than to the other, that is, a translational success is achieved by either the author moving g towards the reader or the reader moving towards the author.

Even this is done, the coordination and confrontation of relevant elements in the SL system adds to the difficulty of translation, for both systems “evolve in a systematically unsystematic fashion: a sort of boiling caldron, manifest within a text as an interplay of intersecting and competing paradigms of formal elements, indicative of the conflicting heterogeneous system with the polysystem as a whole”(Gentzler 1993:117)

Equivalence theories are not tenable here, for this equivalence is always divided into subtypes and binary operations. Take Nida’s formal equivalence and dynamic equivalence as an example, Nida’s recognition of the operation between the elements (for instance, form and meaning) while negligence of the coordination and reconciliation between them lead to this rigid division and a haste preference to dynamic equivalence. However, formal equivalence is not necessarily undynamic and sometimes can be more equivalent than dynamic equivalence. Translation as a form of language use, a kind of verbal communication, involves the participation of not only meaning, but also linguistic form itself, especially when it comes to literary translation wherein the literariness of the original comes from in a sense, the choice of linguistic forms and should be treated with due respect.

Another attempt is to move both the author and the reader towards the translator.

Relevance theory further locates the oneness somewhere between translational success and truthlikeness with the original in terms of logopeia, phanepoeia and melooeia. Chesterman claimed, “translational success is relative to the degree of convergence between the relevant factors”. To guarantee this, the translator has to find the implicature and b inferring the cognitive environment of the reader choose from the various potential versions the optimal one, which can best help the reader to infer the image or message intended by the writer. In doing so, the translator is entitled to make choices according to the skopos, that is to say, the translator is liberalized, to some extent, from the shackles of fidelity and gains some independence and freedom.
Derrida goes further to deny the identity and representability of the original, argues “translation serves to remind us that there is no absolute meaning, no uncontested original” and declares the death of the original. On the other hand, with the expansion of the boundaries of translation studies, translational thinking comes to be perceived as fundamental to all acts of human communication; even the world is “translations of translations”. The debasement of the original and the elevation of translation bring the translator to the foreground. Furthermore, since writer seldom concerns the reader’s response, or at least no writer is ready to communicate at any price, the translator may have reason not to care much about the reader’s expectation. Then, translation is redefined as transformation, an operator of difference that distorts original meaning while simultaneously revealing a network of texts both enabling and prohibiting interlingual communication.

This far, translation itself becomes a concert of discordant elements, whether as a process or a product. Its metaphysics varies diachronically and synchronically due to the tension among its conflicting and coordinating elements and so do its methodology and evaluation.

Bibliography
Gentzler, Edwin. Contemporary Translation Theories. London: Routhedge, 1993.
Qiyi, Liao ed. Contemporary Translation Theories in the Western World. Chongqing : SISU,1997.
Schulte, Rainer and John. Biguenet ed. Theories of Translation. Chicago: The University of Chicago, 1992.
陈德鸿, 张南峰, 《西方翻译理论精选》，香港城市大学出版社，2000。
郭尚兴, 盛兴庆,《中国文化史》，河南大学出版社，1993。
_________________
无话可说

[[timmmid]]

Towards the Myth of Oneness in Translation

The complexity of translation, the most complex thing in the history of the cosmos, lies in the multitude of and the delicate relationship among its relevant factors centering around text (as Newmark’s pulling of ten directions indicates) or the author, the translator and the reader respectively. Translation is universally viewed as a verbal communication among the author, the translator and the reader. Then its context is by no means innocent: all the three may find themselves in an unsystematic system or a concert of discordant elements let alone the pulls and pushes among them. Without the guide of a belief, early translators found themselves lost in the labyrinth of translation wherein random treatments of the original became their last but inevitable resort. Meanwhile, all the beliefs of later translation theorists seem to disturb the previous equilibrium, by neglecting some of these relevant factors, so as to make translation simple enough to manage. The myth of oneness is the crystal and ideal of such sythetical approaches: by a mystical orgasmic relationship, the translator and the writer cease to exist as separate entities and become one. Still so will the translator, the writer and the reader do. Virtually, this fusion---in a sense, means a successful translation- is obtained in three ways: 1). The translator and the reader move towards the writer who remains in peace. 2). The writer and the translator move towards the reader who remains in peace. 3). The writer and the reader move towards the translator who remains in peace.
The influence religious belief exercises on translation somehow brings the original sort of mystic flavor and consequently elevates the source text to the status of bible, the writer that of the oracle. In light of this metaphysics of presence, the god-given virtue of the original should be represented to the most in translation. As for the translator, all things are complete within him, what he need do is to cultivate himself, thus to know his mind and nature, and thus to understand Heaven (郭尚兴 1993：15), then, facing the original, he still has to exercise his mind to the most by decoding and inferring, to find out the implicature from the explicature of the original by means of all the communication clues available at all levels of phonology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics etc. the more empathy the translator has, the more likely he will integrate with the writer.

Thus, the original becomes the source and the ultimate destination of translation. Through trust, aggression, incorporation and restitution, the translation has good reason to achieve a fusion with the original, which in turn, ensures the divinity and eternity of its existence.

With this as the doctrine, most translation theories, despite different approaches, are respectively unified by a source-oriented conceptual framework which assumes original presence and a representation of it in the target society through some notion f equivalence: the same aesthetic experience, linguistic structural\dynamic equivalence, corresponding literary function or similar formal correlation governed by acceptability in the target culture (Gentzler 1993:145)

In consequence, this worship of oneness leads to rigid distinctions between the original text and its translation, distinctions which determine evaluation of translation. Absolute fidelity to the original unavoidably results in the invisibility of the translator, which in fact is perceived as the very achievement. However, despite the entire translator’s efforts, the master-slave relationship between the original text and its translation (the author and the translator) foreshadows the impossibility of oneness even at the sacrifice of the translator. Translation is viewed as a betrayal and ranked the lowest in the hierarchy of literary polysystem.

The translator vanished, the communication is simplified into direct confrontation of the writer and the reader, or in a sense the SL system and the TL system. However, can this face-to-face communication end up in further oneness, which can ensure a successful translation? The exploration of underlying bases for human communication may still present a tug of war between limiting factors that “no two people employ precisely the same symbols for the same type of experience, nor do they employ the same symbols in exactly the same ways” and factors that enable effective communication including “the similarity of mental process, somatic responses, range of cultural experience, and capacity for adjustment to the behavior patterns of others” (Liao Qiyi 1994:189). Is the pull towards the similarity t come r just otherwise? Nida’s adjustment of communication channel seems to be a satisfactory solution for most issues in question, yet he at least overlooks the following facts:

1). Communication is a two-way (instead of one-way) dynamic process with confrontations and negotiations between the participants. This, in translation, a cross-cultural communication, though does not necessarily mean that the translator starts again from the very beginning when something is mistranslated, it does mean a mutual communicating between the original and its translation. In such a way, multiple translations are justified.

2). All messages are ambiguous and fussy. This is true especially with literary works, the meaning of which lies at least at three levels (see the following figure): a). Meaning, which is comparatively definite and salient enough to grasp. B). Intention or intended effects, which embodies the pushes and pulls between tradition and writer’s creation, and denies any easy comprehension though it somehow leaves traces through the writer’s deviation from language norms. C). Spirit, which is a dynamic fusion of both culture and the writer’s originality, and is the most unapproachable for it triggers (as the writer always intends) varieties of comprehension.

Even simple message can never keep intact after transferal, not to speak such complicated entity, and thus no communication can guarantee 100 percent correspondence between input and output.
The notion of effective communication gives certain translatability by locating the oneness somewhere between the SL system and the TL system, yet virtually always closer to one than to the other, that is, a translational success is achieved by either the author moving g towards the reader or the reader moving towards the author.

Even this is done, the coordination and confrontation of relevant elements in the SL system adds to the difficulty of translation, for both systems “evolve in a systematically unsystematic fashion: a sort of boiling caldron, manifest within a text as an interplay of intersecting and competing paradigms of formal elements, indicative of the conflicting heterogeneous system with the polysystem as a whole”(Gentzler 1993:117)

Equivalence theories are not tenable here, for this equivalence is always divided into subtypes and binary operations. Take Nida’s formal equivalence and dynamic equivalence as an example, Nida’s recognition of the operation between the elements (for instance, form and meaning) while negligence of the coordination and reconciliation between them lead to this rigid division and a haste preference to dynamic equivalence. However, formal equivalence is not necessarily undynamic and sometimes can be more equivalent than dynamic equivalence. Translation as a form of language use, a kind of verbal communication, involves the participation of not only meaning, but also linguistic form itself, especially when it comes to literary translation wherein the literariness of the original comes from in a sense, the choice of linguistic forms and should be treated with due respect.

Another attempt is to move both the author and the reader towards the translator.

Relevance theory further locates the oneness somewhere between translational success and truthlikeness with the original in terms of logopeia, phanepoeia and melooeia. Chesterman claimed, “translational success is relative to the degree of convergence between the relevant factors”. To guarantee this, the translator has to find the implicature and b inferring the cognitive environment of the reader choose from the various potential versions the optimal one, which can best help the reader to infer the image or message intended by the writer. In doing so, the translator is entitled to make choices according to the skopos, that is to say, the translator is liberalized, to some extent, from the shackles of fidelity and gains some independence and freedom.
Derrida goes further to deny the identity and representability of the original, argues “translation serves to remind us that there is no absolute meaning, no uncontested original” and declares the death of the original. On the other hand, with the expansion of the boundaries of translation studies, translational thinking comes to be perceived as fundamental to all acts of human communication; even the world is “translations of translations”. The debasement of the original and the elevation of translation bring the translator to the foreground. Furthermore, since writer seldom concerns the reader’s response, or at least no writer is ready to communicate at any price, the translator may have reason not to care much about the reader’s expectation. Then, translation is redefined as transformation, an operator of difference that distorts original meaning while simultaneously revealing a network of texts both enabling and prohibiting interlingual communication.

This far, translation itself becomes a concert of discordant elements, whether as a process or a product. Its metaphysics varies diachronically and synchronically due to the tension among its conflicting and coordinating elements and so do its methodology and evaluation.

Bibliography
Gentzler, Edwin. Contemporary Translation Theories. London: Routhedge, 1993.
Qiyi, Liao ed. Contemporary Translation Theories in the Western World. Chongqing : SISU,1997.
Schulte, Rainer and John. Biguenet ed. Theories of Translation. Chicago: The University of Chicago, 1992.
陈德鸿, 张南峰, 《西方翻译理论精选》，香港城市大学出版社，2000。
郭尚兴, 盛兴庆,《中国文化史》，河南大学出版社，1993。
_________________
无话可说

[星子]

Thanks Timmit for posting this.

It is a great way to grow when we have a open mind to get know what others think.
_________________

[[ANNA]]

Thanks Timmit for posting this.

It is a great way to grow when we have a open mind to get know what others think.
_________________