从“以画言事”到“以言行事”——政治漫画翻译补偿研究.pdf

武汉科技大学 硕士学位论文 从“以画言事”到“以言行事”政治漫画翻译补偿研究 姓名：牟立群 申请学位级别：硕士 专业：外国语言学及应用语言学 指导教师：彭灵芝 2010-11-06 武汉科技大学武汉科技大学 硕士学位论文 第 i 页 摘摘 要要 过去三十多年，理论工作者将语言学、语用学、认知语言学、对比文学、文化学等领 域的研究成果运用于翻译研究，取得了令人瞩目的成就，拓展了我们的视野。为了促进翻 译理论的发展，翻译理论工作者有必要对翻译理论进行细化。对于当代翻译领域的许多语 言学家及研究人员而言，符际翻译仍非其关注的焦点。相关领域学者对符际翻译的忽视间 接表明其边缘性，复杂性及跨学科的特点。但是语言之外的符号体系，尤其是图像和图片 在现代社会俯拾皆是。 不同国家和地区之间以图像和图片为媒介的交流已是相当普遍，本文所探讨的政治漫 画便是其中之一。政治漫画是指通过漫画展示国内和国际社会所发生的事件。转载的政治 漫画作为地区或国际社会所发生事件的缩影，是跨文化图像翻译中的典型，但以漫画翻译 为对象所开展的研究在翻译研究领域屈指可数。 政治漫画所包含的大量文化信息， 如政治， 经济，宗教等等，使得政治漫画翻译较纯文本翻译而言，更为复杂和繁复。本文通过对国 内媒体所转载政治漫画翻译实际案例的研究，归纳出政治漫画翻译的定义，类型及步骤。 政治漫画翻译指以图片说明的方式对政治漫画的翻译，其内容不仅包括政治漫画的标题和 （或）图像文本、漫画自带的图片说明，也包括政治漫画的背景知识，有时译者会通过政 治漫画翻译文本表达其对所翻译政治漫画的个人观点。政治漫画翻译分为解释型翻译、比 喻型翻译、提喻型翻译和夸张型翻译。政治漫画翻译可具体细化成五个步骤，即解码、分 析、处理、转语和校订。翻译中普遍存在的信息丢失问题，在政治漫画翻译中更为频繁和 多见。针对在解码和转语阶段所出现的“无意”的信息丢失，本文提出了补偿的原则和办 法。在解码阶段，译者不仅要重视图像文本、语境和政治漫画作者心理的重要作用，还需 避免“沉锚”、“孤岛”心理规律的影响。而在转语阶段译者要依据需求原则、相关原则 和重点原则对翻译文本进行必要的补偿。 关键词：关键词：政治漫画，文化差异, 符际翻译, 翻译补偿 武汉科技大学武汉科技大学 硕士学位论文 第 ii 页 abstract for more than thirty years findings in linguistics, pragmatics, cognitive linguistics, comparative literature, cultural studies, etc. have been applied to the study of translation, and striking results have been reported. to promote further development of translation studies, it is necessary to set up a multi- level theoretical framework. nowadays, linguists and researchers in the field of translation still regard intersemiotic translation as periphery. the reason why the study of intersemiotic translation has attracted not so much attention indicates that it is an underestimated area of considerable complexity and interdisciplinarity. but they ignore that different semiotic systems, especially images or pictures are omnipresent in modern society. and communication in this regard among nations and regions is ubiquitous, with political cartoons or editorial cartoons, which display events taking place at home or abroad through iconographs or pictures, a typical example. republished political cartoons, which is the visual epitome of an incident or event, regional or international, and some of which present striking pictorial comment on politics, is a typical representation of cross- cultural iconographical translation. the large amount of cultural information, such as political, economic, religious and so on, lying behind political cartoons, make the translation practice of them more complex and complicated than absolute text translation. through the research on the political cartoons republished by domestic media, this thesis is to set up the theoretical framework of political cartoon translation, i.e. establish the definition , types and steps of political cartoon translation. political cartoon translation is a kind of intercultural iconographical translation, the purpose of which is to help readers of the target language understand the communicative intention of the cartoonist of the source language, usually in the form of caption which includes not only the translation of the title and/or iconotex(and/or caption), but background information of the cartoon, even gives the opinion of the translators as well. political cartoon translation can be divided into paraphrastic translation, metonymy translation, synecdoche translation and hyperbole translation. the procedure of political cartoon translation includes decoding, analysis, manipulation, transmutation and revise. as information losses is common in translation, especially in political cartoon translation, the thesis also offers solutions to information losses during two steps in practice, i.e. decoding and transformation which information losses is at its highest here. to minimize the losses of information in decoding, translators are imperative to pay more attention to several elements in political cartoons. these elements are iconotext, context, psychology of the cartoonist, at the 武汉科技大学武汉科技大学 硕士学位论文 第 iii 页 same time translators must refrain from the influence of anchor effect and isolation effect. as for compensation in transmutation, there are three principles by which translators can abide, i.e. demanding principle, relevant principle and key- information principle. key words: political cartoons, cultural difference, intersemiotic translation, compensation on translation 武汉科技大学武汉科技大学 硕士学位论文 第 1 页 chapter i introduction nowadays, linguists and researchers in the field of translation still regard intersemiotic translation as periphery. the reason why the study of intersemiotic translation has attracted not so much attention indicates that it is an underestimated area of considerable complexity and interdisciplinarity. but they ignore that different semiotic systems, especially images or pictures are omnipresent in modern society, and communication in this regard among nations and regions is ubiquitous, with political cartoons or editorial cartoons a typical example. 1.1 research background political cartoon translation itself should be viewed as a subcategory of intersemiotic translation by the definition proposed by jacobson, which displays events through iconographs or pictures. and the translation of political cartoons, according to professor wang ning, also is a branch of cross- cultural iconographic translation. translation study with the political cartoons as the object currently accounts for a small proportion of translation research. it is for three reasons: firstly, domestic print media still is dominated by texts despite eye- popping cartoons reaching a large amount of readership for its striking pictorial comment on politics. at the same time, a large quantity of translated material is the absolute text or the audiovisual ones. secondly, political cartoon translation is very complicated, involving art, culture and language, etc. in the light of these concerns, translators find it a field very charming ，but extremely difficult to set foot in. thirdly, the translation of political cartoons has not received the academic attention that it deserves because of the high degree of invisibility around it in a world of high level of education. nevertheless, the growth of republished cartoons in domestic print media, with electric media more ambitious, is promising not only for readers, but translators as well. print media republishing political cartoons on a wide range of subjects in china has a large amount and varies, ranging from newspaper, such as china daily (chinese version), reference news, southern weekly, etc., to such journals as readers, world vision, globe digest and so on. when it comes to electric media, webs which devote to cartoons includes n, satire and , p, c and so forth. apparently quantity cannot be a gauge of quality, and there is a tendency to compartmental contributions in translation. 1.2 purpose and significance of the study the previous theoretical study of translation neglected the aspect of intersemiotic translation from the perspective of cross- cultural iconography. the objective of this thesis is to set up the theoretical framework of political cartoon translation and provide compensation 武汉科技大学武汉科技大学 硕士学位论文 第 2 页 solutions to information losses during the process of political cartoon translation. republished political cartoons, which are the visual epitome of incidents or events, regional or international, and some of which present striking pictorial comment on politics, is a typical representation of cross- cultural iconographical translation (hereinafter referred to as ccit). the substantial pieces of cultural information, such as political, economic, religious and so on, lying behind political cartoons, make the translation practice of them more complex and complicated than absolute text translation. based on the research on political cartoons republished by domestic media, the thesis sets up the theoretical framework of political cartoon translation, i.e. establishes the definition , types and steps of political cartoon translation. as information losses is common in translation, especially in political cartoon translation. the thesis also offers solutions to information losses during two steps in practice, i.e. decoding and transformation which the information loss is at its highest here. 1.3 methodology of the research in this thesis, case study is adopted as the major research method. the case used for analysis here are selected mainly from cartoons by domestic media, which almost carry the cartoons falling under the first category of political cartoon translation(discussed in chapter 4), with the exception of southern weekly, which cartoons republished or used from foreign media pair with commendatory. instead of doing a research which bases on the general intersemiotic translation, this thesis attempts to have the translation of political cartoons in its crosshairs. the words “political” and “cartoons” in the title indicates that the topic of the thesis is narrowed to a specific area of cross- cultural iconographic translation. what will be involved is political cartoons, excluding all the non- political cartoons, such as strip- cartoons, humorous drawings. in addition, dead- tree newspaper, especially southern weekly, with its distinctive translation of political cartoons commendatory , which seems no other print newspaper has embraced political cartoons carried by foreign media as fully as it, is chosen as the main media for the case involved in the research topic because it carries all the four categories of political cartoon translation. three political cartoons from n, which carries the cartoons falling under the first category of political cartoon translation, just likes other print and electric media(discussed in chapter 4), princess and the pea economy（公主和豌豆经济）, economy out of the woods(脱离困境的经济) and co2 globe （二氧化碳球体） , are also included in our research. although all iconotext translated, all of them are at the expense of losing the related background knowledge and cultural information, with economy out of the woodss translation a mistake. 1.4 layout of the research 武汉科技大学武汉科技大学 硕士学位论文 第 3 页 based on the cross- cultural communicationism and semiotics approaches and other relevant concepts of translation theory, this thesis discuss the types and steps of political cartoon translation and then turns to deal with one critical problem, i.e. information losses during the process of political cartoon translation and the corresponding compensation solutions. this paper consists of six parts. the general structure is as following: chapter one gives an introduction to the background, purpose and significance, and methodology of this paper. chapter two is literature review. this part introduces the previous study of intersemiotic translation at home and abroad. and it also relates to comics translation, which is conducted overwhelmingly abroad. chapter three has two parts. the first one states the definition, categorization and characteristics of political cartoons, focusing on the point that it is a structure composed of semiotical features including linguistic, which interrelate with each other. the second part inscribes the cultural differences in political cartoons between china and the west. chapter four is devoted to the definition, categorization, procedure and difficulties of political cartoon translation. when it comes to political cartoon translation, the most important characteristics is the interaction between two semiotic systems, verbal and non- verbal one (pictures in political cartoons). the target text is not nice- to- have or merely decorative but plays a very important role in any political cartoon translation. therefore, it is imperative that the verbal and non- verbal systems match. it is also pointed out that political cartoon translation is a demanding practice of translation for translator who is not only an expert in linguistics, but also in art and culture. at the same time, it illustrates how to strike a delicate balance between undertranslation and overtranslation, i.e. achieve “gold mean of political cartoon translation”. chapter five is to analyze the compensation solutions to information losses for political cartoon, in which focuses on the compensation for information losses in two steps of the procedure of political cartoon translation, i.e. decoding and transmutation. the discussion is mainly based on translation psychology, which is believed to exert on translator during translation. chapter six serves as a conclusion. the last chapter concludes by suggesting that intersemiotic translation should be paid more attention to, as translation is actually go far beyond language in modern society with the cross- cultural communication commonplace. it also offers some suggestions to further research on political cartoon translation, in the light of making full use of cartoons in overseas- targeted publicity. 武汉科技大学武汉科技大学 硕士学位论文 第 4 页 chapter ii literature review to predict some future developments of translation is a somewhat uncanny ability that roman jakobson seems to have had. in the year 1960 jakobson made the statement as following: “besides and decoding, also the procedure of recoding, code switching, briefly, the various facets of translation, is becoming one of the focal concerns both of linguistics and of communication theory”(jakobson, 1961). in the intervening 50 years, translation research field witnessed dramatic changes and progresses. jakobsons intersemiotic translation, which transposes verbal language into nonverbal languages, generates inspiration of scholars in the field of translation. 2.1 study of intersemiotic translation intersemiotic translation put forward by jacobson gives the term translation extralinguistic horizons. the wider phenomenon including unconventional forms of translation is either supported by non- semiotic translation theoreticians or often rejected as being non- empirical. nevertheless, the pros and cons will lead to an ongoing wider acceptance of semiotic methodology in the field of translation. 2.1.1 introduction to intersemiotic translation jakobsons intersemiotic translational work is rooted in his own almost classical diagram about the three kinds of interpreting a verbal sign distinguished as divided but correlated forms of translation: 1) intralingual translation or rewording is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs of the same language. 2) interlingual translation or translation proper is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of some other language. 3) intersemiotic translation or transmutation is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems.(jakobson, 1959: 233) jakobsons categorization does have the advantage of placing translation within a wider context by comparing it with similar processes and thus enabling one to generalize about how signs can be changed into other signs. thus he observes that in intersemiotic translation “certain structural features are preserved despite the disappearance of their verbal shape”, and concludes that “many poetic features belong not only to the science of language but to the whole theory of signs, that is , to general semiotics”(jakobson, 1960:350- 51). 武汉科技大学武汉科技大学 硕士学位论文 第 5 页 2.1.2 study of intersemiotic translation abroad while gorle,dinda l thinks that what is thus meant by the term is not translation in the standard sense, but transmutation of a verbal message into another medium of expression, or in other words translation in a figurative sense, since the target code is a language “only in a metaphorical manner of speaking” (gorle 1994:162). indeed, it is clear that intersemiotic translation is in many ways set apart from jakobsons other two types. gorle pointed out that information losses is at its highest here(gorle 1994:168). the creative side of intersemiotic recoding presupposes the improvised desire and free will (on the part of the receptor) translations from the meaning of written signs of a verbal language into a language in a mixed, metaphorical manner of speaking; see visual languages (e.g., plastic arts, painting, sculpture, computer language, architecture, and photography), kinesic languages (e.g., ballet and pantomime), auditive languages (e.g., music and song) and intermedial languages (e.g., cinema and opera). in 2008,gorle put forward that metalinguistic operations signify understanding and translation, specified in jakobsons varieties of sixlanguage functions and his three types of translation. both models were first presented in the 1950s. his argument is rooted in jakobsons models in connetion with peirces three categories. his three functions with qualitive difference anticipated, perhaps not accidentally, jakobsons distinctions indicating qualitative difference within literary forms and structures as well as other fine arts. the semiotic discovery, criticism and perspective of elements and code- units settle the numerical differences as well as the differences in realistic messages and conceptual codes. jakobsons intersemiotic translaion is updated in vocal translation, which deals with the virtual reality of opera on stage, reaching a catharsis of the operatic mystique. the word- tone synthesis of opera (or semiotic symbiosis) will demonstrate the typological unification of verbal and nonverbal languages. however, some commentators have strong misgivings about the appropriateness of the term, simply because of its counter- intuitive nature. according to sturrock, it is “a semiotic change so radical as to depart from what we normally understand by translation” (sturrock,1991:310). in his opinion, intersemiotic translation is a one- way process, while the other two types are at least potentially reversible. mikkneon. kai proposes th