翻譯理論：重要概念

1. 翻譯理論：重要概念 Week 5~8

2. the original: • Poststructuralist textuality redefines the notion of equivalence in translation by assuming from the outset that the differential plurality in every text precludes a simple correspondence of meaning… (Lawrence Venuti) • Neither the foreign text nor the translation is an original semantic unity; both are derivative and heterogeneous, consisting of diverse linguistic and cultural materials which destablize the work of signification, making meaning plural and differential, exceeding and possibly conflicting with the intentions of the foreign writer and the translation. (Lawrence Venuti)

3. “kinship” of the original and translation: continuity and discontinuity Benjamin: (1) a translation, instead of resembling the meaning of the original, must lovingly and in detail incorporate the original's mode of signification, thus making both the original and the translation recognizable as fragments of a greater language, just as fragments are part of a vessel. kinship does not necessarily involve likeness.

4. (2) afterlife: a translation issues from the original—not so much from its life as from its afterlife. • no translation would be possible if in its ultimate essence it strove for likeness to the original. For in its afterlife…the original undergoes a change. • “monstrosity of translation”

5. (3) A real translation is transparent; it does not cover the original, does not block its light, but allows the pure language, as though reinforced by its own medium, to shine upon the original all the more fully. This may be achieved, above all, by a literal rendering of the syntax which proves words rather than sentences to be the primary element of the translation.

6. Fidelity and literal translation • Jacques Derrida’s notion of “economy” in translation: • 1. property: the law of what is proper; to transport home in the most appropriate way possible. • 2. quantity: calculable quantity • The translation must be quantitatively equivalent to the original… • This quantitative unit of measurement is not in itself quantitative; it is rather qualitative in a certain sense… the unit of measurement is the unit of the word.

7. 廖朝陽： • Fidelity ＆ way of meaning & meaning • 把其他語言的表達方式保留和呈現出來 • one-to-one :保障bare life • Translation & ethics • Translation and possibilities of the future • Inheriting tradition

8. Foreignization vs. fluent strategy Lawrence Venuti: Abusive fidelity clearly entails a rejection of the fluency that dominates contemporary translation in favor of an opposing strategy that can aptly be called resistancy. resistant strategies can help to preserve the linguistic and cultural difference of the foreign text by producing translations which are strange and estranging, which mark the limits of dominant values in the target-language culture and hinder those values from enacting an imperialistic domestication of a cultural other.