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2005-03-17 23:39 |
我也来加点,以前上课的笔记,希望没过时.
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Translation and Translating:
Theory and Practice
梁正宇
zhengyul@gliet.edu.cn
560-6550, 560-1360
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Week II
Translation theory and methodology
Rules, Process and Product
Rules
Tytler (Bell 1991) states that translation attends only to the sense (intended meaning) and spirit of the original additionally, conveys the style and manner of writing of the original writer.
‘Laws’ (Tytler,1791)
The translation should give a complete transcript of the ideas of the original work The style and manner of writing should be of the same character with that of the original The translation should have all the ease of original composition.
Bell (1991)
The content and style of the original text should be preserved as far as is possible in the translated text. Translation refers to the process the product of the process the abstract concept which encompasses both the process of translating and the product of that process Investigation of the translation process is undertaken within the discipline of psychological study of perception, information processing and memory cognitive science
Psycholinguistics and translation
Psycholinguistics examines the process in the minds of the translator Sociolinguistics and translation Sociolinguistics places the source language text and target language text in their cultural contexts.
Week III
What is a translator?
A bilingual mediating agent between monolingual communication participants in two different language communities, e.g. the translator decodes messages transmitted in one language and re-encoded them in another (House, 1977)
Memory, meaning and language
The translator, like any other communicator, lives in the world of the senses through which perceptions are integrated as concepts; experiences can be recalled and even relived through the system of memory.
Sensation
Receiving stimuli from the outside world through the senses
Perception
The organization of these impressions into an endless varied but stable and consistent world with agreed dimensions of space and time.
The processes of sensation and perception
Aggregate Whole System
The chaotic aggregates which are fed into the mind through the senses have boundaries put around them by the processes of perception and are thus converted into information-bearing “wholes”. Aggregates and wholes are substantial “things” in the “real world”, in contrast with system which is abstract and exists in the mind.
The communication process
the sender selects message and code encodes message selects channel transmits signal containing message receiver receives signal containing message recognizes code decodes signal retrieves message comprehends message
The translation process
Translator receives signal 1 containing message Recognizes code 1Decodes signal 1Retrieves message Comprehends message Translator selects code 2Encodes message by means of code 2Selects channel Transmits signal 2 containing message
The transformation of a source language text into a target language text by means of processes which take place within memory:
The analysis of one language-specific text (the source language text) into a universal (non-language-specific) semantic representation. The synthesis of that semantic representation into a second language-specific text.
What is translation theory?
Linguists misconstrue the objectives and methods of translation theory
Translation theorists demonstrate a far from adequate grasp of the principles of linguistics and its methods of investigation
What is translation theory?
Bell (1991) states that advances of translation theory can only be achieved through a study of the process of translational description of that process an explanation of that process
2. Theories, models and analogies
3. Requirements for a theory of translation
4. Methodology: investigation translation
Week VI
Defining Communication
More than 126
Complexity of Communication
Intentional and Unintentional behavior
Components of Communication
Complexity of Communication
Human communication is a subtle and ingenious set of processes. It is always thick with a thousand ingredients – signals, codes, meanings – no matter how simple the message or transaction.
Neurologists look at what the brain and the nervous system do. Psychologists are apt to examine issues related to perception Linguists inspect the language people use.…
Intentional and Unintentional Behavior
The first school, represented by Miller and Steinberg, describes communication as as the process whereby one person deliberately attempts to convey meaning to another.
The second school believes that communication takes place whenever people attach meaning to behavior, even if the sender of the message does not expect his or her actions to be communicated. Communication can influence other people whether or not such influence is intended.
When engaging in intercultural communication, it is important to know your actions have potential to convey many meanings. The seemingly innocent acts of showing the soles of your feet to a stranger in Korea or touch a woman you are introduced to in Saudi Arabia could send negative messages that hamper the rest of the encounter.
Components of Communication
Communication is a dynamic, systematic, process in which meanings are created and reflected in human interaction with symbols. Communication is a dynamic process It is an ongoing activity. It is changing. Once a word or an action is employed, it cannot be retracted. All the elements of communication constantly interact with each other. Inattention pervades our communication behavior.
Communication is systemic
Place/location
Occasion
Time
Number of people
Culture (rules, values, norms, traditions, taboos, and customs …
Communication is symbolic
Symbols, by virtue of their standing for something else, give us an opportunity to share our personal realities.
Attribution of meaning
Emphasizes the attribution of meaning to a behavior we encounter in our environment.
Imagine that somewhere in each of our brain is a meaning reservoir in which are stored all of the meanings we process at any given moment. These various meanings have accumulated throughout our time as the outside world has sent us trillions of messages.
Translating: modeling the process
Knowledge and Skills
(Translator competence)
What does the translator’s knowledge-base contain?
Target language knowledge
Text-type knowledge
Source language knowledge
Subject area (real world) knowledge
Contrastive knowledge
Ideal bilingual competence
An ideal bilingual reader-writer, who know both languages perfectly and is unaffected by such theoretically irrelevant conditions as memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention or interest, and errors in applying this knowledge in actual performance.
Expertise
A knowledge base An inference mechanism The decoding of the texts, I.e. reading and comprehending the source language texts The encoding of texts i.e. writing target language texts
Communicative competence
Grammatical competence Sociolinguistic competence Discourse competence Strategic competence
Week V
Equivalence at word level-The word in different languages
What is a word?
The word is the smallest unit of language that can be used by itself (Bolinger & Sears, 1968:43)
Is there a one-to-one relationship between word and meaning?
What is a morpheme?
Lexical meaning Propositional meaning Expressive meaning Presupposed meaning Evoked meaning
Week VI
Non-equivalence at word level and some common strategies for dealing with it
Non-equivalence at word level means that the target language has no direct equivalent for a word which occurs in the source text.
The type and level of difficulty posed can vary tremendously depending on the nature of non-equivalence.
Different kinds of non-equivalence require different strategies, some very straightforward, others more involved and difficult to handle.
In addition to the nature of non-equivalence, the text and purpose of translation will often rule out some strategies and favor others.
Common problems of non-equivalence
Culture specific concepts
The source-language concept is not lexicalized in the target languages.
The source-language word may be semantically complex.
The source and target languages make different distinctions in meaning
The target language lacks a super ordinate
The target language lacks a specific term (or hyponym)
Difference in physical or interpersonal perspective
Differences in expressive meaning
Differences in form
Differences in frequency and purpose of using specific forms
The use of loan words in the source text
Week VII
Strategies used by professional translators
Examples of strategies used by professional translators for dealing with various types of non-equivalence at the word level.
1. Translation by a more general word (super ordinate)
Source text 1
The rich and creamy KOLESTRAL-SUPER is easy to apply and has a pleasant fragrance.
Target text (Arabic)
KOLESTRAL-SUPER is a rich and concentrated in its make-up which gives a product that resembles cream, making it extremely easy to put on the air.
Source text 2
Shampoo the hair with a mild WELLA-SHAMPOO and lightly towel dry.
Target text (Spanish)
Wash hair with a mild WELLA-SHAMPOO and rub lightly with a towel.
2. Translation by a more neutral or less expressive word
Source text 1
Someone mumbles, “Our competitors do it.”
Target text (Italian)
Someone suggests:” Our competitors do it.”
Source text 2
Many of the species growing wild here are familiar to us as plants cultivated in European gardens – species like this exotic lily.
Target text (Chinese)
这里野生的许多种类我们都很熟习,是欧洲园林内种植的那些, 就像这一奇异的百合花.
3. Translation by cultural substitute
This strategy involves replacing a culture-specific item or expression with a target language item which does not have the same propositional meaning but is likely to have a similar impact on the target reader. The main advantage of using this strategy is that it gives the reader a concept with which he can identify, something familiar and appealing.
Source text
They are simply Romeo and Juliet at the 21th century.
Target text (Chinese)
他们简直就是二十一世纪的梁山伯与祝英台.
4. Translation by using a loan word or loan word plus explanation
Source text zested
他们用扁担挑.
Target text
They carried it with a Biandan.
They carried it with a Biandan – a piece of bamboo used for …
5. Translation by paraphrase using a related word
Source language
The rich and creamy KOLESTRAL-SUPER is easy to apply and has a pleasant fragrance.
Target text
KOLESTRAL-SUPER is a rich and concentrated in its make-up which gives a product that resembles cream, making it extremely easy to put on the air.
6. Translation by paraphrase using unrelated words
Source language
They have a totally integrated operation from the preparation of the yarn through to the weaving process.
Target text
The company carries out all steps of production in its factories, from preparing the yarn to weaving it.
7. Translation by omission
8. Translation by illustration
Week VIII
Equivalence above word level
In this chapter we will consider what happens when words start combining with other words to form stretches of language.
There are always restrictions on the way words can be combined to convey meaning.
Lexical patterning will be dealt with under two main headings: Collocation Idioms and fixed expressions
Collocation – introduction
Why do builders not produce a building or authors not invent a novel, since they do invent stories and plots? No reason as far as dictionary definitions of words is concerned. We don’t say it because we don’t say it.
The patterns of collocations are largely arbitrary and independent of meaning.
Pay a visit√
Make a visit ×
Perform a visit ×
Grilled bread ×
Break rules √
Break regulations ×
Deliver a verdict √
Pronounce a verdict √
Pronounce a sentence ×
Deliver a sentence
Collocation range
Different. Some broader, others narrower.
Shrug shoulders
Run a company
Run a business
Run a car…
Two main factors can influence the collocation range of an item.
First, its level of specificity: the more general a word is, the broader its collocation range; the more specific it is, the more restricted its collocation range. No collocation is impossible. Collocation ranges are not fixed.
Compulsive gambler vs. heavy gambler
Compulsive gambler is a common collocation
Heavy gambler represents an attempt to extend the range of heavy to include heavy gambler, by analog with heavy smoker and heavy drinker.
This kind of natural extension of a range is less striking than marked collocation.
Collocation marked ness
Deliberate confusion of collocation ranges to create new images
A marked collocation is an unusual combination of words, one that challenges our expectation as hearers or readers. Marked collocation is often used in fiction, poetry, humor, and advertisements.
Reasons:
Because they can create unusual images, they produce laughter and catch the readers’ attention.
In-class practice:
Week IX
The patterns of collocations are largely arbitrary and independent of meaning.
Collocation range is different. Some broader, others narrower.
Collocation and register
Lectures for Thursday
Collocation meaning
Some collocation related pitfalls and problems in translation
Week X
Review on Collocation meaning
Can a word on its own mean anything?
What we do when asked to give an account of the meaning of a word in isolation is to contextualize it in its most typical collocations.
Dry; dry clothes; dry river; dry weather
When move away from the most common collocation, the meaning of dry depends largely on its pattern of collocation and is not something that the word possesses in isolation.
dry cow 没奶的牛 dry bread不涂黄油的面包 dry wine不含甜味的酒 dry book枯燥无味的书
dry voice冷淡的声音 dry humor 冷静的幽默
What a word means often depends on its association with certain collocates.
When the translation of a word or a stretch of language is criticized as being inaccurate or inappropriate in a given context, the criticism may refer to the translator’s inability to recognize a collocation pattern with a unique meaning different from the sum of the meanings of its individual elements.
Some collocation related pitfalls and problems in translation
Differences in the collocation patterning of the source and target languages create potential pitfalls and can pose various problems in translation.
The engrossing effect of source text patterning
Put shoe repairs into French
Reparer ses chaussures?
In French, repair collocates with things like refrigerator, cars, and machines in general.
Sessemeler ses chaussures
Confusing source and target patterns is a pitfall that can easily be avoided once the translator is alerted to the potential influence that the collocation patterning of the source text can have on him/her.
At any rate, translators are well advised to avoid carrying over source-language collocation patterns which are untypical of the target language.
Misinterpreting the meaning of a source-language collocation
A translator can easily misinterpret a collocation in the source text due to interference from his/her native language. This happens when a source-language collocation appears to be familiar because it corresponds in form to a common collocation in the target language.
The tension between accuracy and naturalness
In rendering unmarked source-language collocations into his/her target language, a translator ideally aims at producing a collocation which is typical in the target language while, at the same time, preserving the meaning associated with the source collocation.
This ideal cannot always be achieved. Translation often involves a tension – a difficult choice between what is typical and what is accurate.
Cultural-specific collocations
Some collocations reflect the cultural settings in which they occurs. If the cultural settings of the source and target languages are significantly different, there will be instances when the source text will contain would be unfamiliar associations collocations which convey what to the target reader would be unfamiliar association of ideas.
Marked collocation in the source text
To conclude our brief discussion of collocation, I would reiterate that language is not made up of a large number of words which can be used together in free variation. Words have a certain tolerance of compatibility. Like individual words, collocational patterns carry meaning and can be culture-specific. This, in addition to their largely arbitrary nature, gives rise to numerous pitfalls and problems in translation.
Week XI
Cultures in translation
Perception; Culture and perception; Beliefs; Values
Perception
How do you look at the moon?
How do many Americans see the moon?
What is the physical mechanism of perception?
What is the most significant stage in intercultural communication and translation?
Culture and perception
Culture provides us with a perceptual lens that greatly influences how we interpret and evaluate what we receive from the outside world.
How do you look at assertiveness, excitement and interest?
Americans? Japanese?
Credibility
Americans? Japanese? Chinese?
The blinking of the eyes while others are talking
How do you look at the ages?
Beliefs
Belief systems are significant to the study of intercultural communication and translation because they are at the core of our thoughts and actions.
Values
Taking belief systems as its basis, a value may be defined as an enduring belief that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable to another.
Idioms and fixed expressions
Collocations are fairly flexible patterns of language
Fixed expressions and proverbs allow little or no variation in form
Idioms allow no variation in form
Collocations are fairly flexible patterns of language e.g.
Deliver a letter
Delivery of a letter
A letter has been delivered…
Fixed expressions and proverbs allow little or no variation in form, e.g.
As a fact matter
Gentlemen and ladies
The all best
Idioms allow no variation in form, e.g. allow no change of the order of the words in it
The long and the short of it √
The short and the long of it X 概括
Idioms allow no variation in form, e.g. it is not allowed to delete a word from it
Spill the beans √
Spill beans X 走漏风声
Idioms allow no variation in form, e.g. it is not allowed to add a word to it
The long and the short of it √
The very long and the short of it X
Idioms allow no variation in form, e.g. it is not allowed to replace a word with another
Bury the hatchet √
Bury a hatchet X 重归于好
Idioms allow no variation in form, e.g. it is not allowed to change its grammatical structure
Face the music√
The music was faced X 勇于承担责任, 临危不惧
The interpretation of idioms
It is raining cats and dogs 雨倾盆而下
Throw caution to the winds 蓄意不考虑后果而行动
Storm in a tea cup 小题大做 |
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口译中需要强记的词组
