（外国语言学及应用语言学专业论文）译文多元化的实证研究.pdf

iv 摘 要 具有悠久历史的翻译理论研究，将重点放在源语作品，目标语译文，及翻译 转换评价上等等，试图拓出一条思维路线使原文和译文对等起来，由此，长期以 来，忠实与对等便成了翻译理论研究的主要着眼点。为了达至满意的完美译本， 翻译研究又通常将注意力放在对不同译文的比较上，尤其是文学作品的译文比 较，而对译文的多元视角及多元化的可能性论及甚少。 本论文旨意推出译文应该多元化的原则，而不应拘泥于一种所谓的“标准译 文” 。参考译文多元化的时代意义在于其对以往 “绝对忠实原文”这一宗旨指导 下的“标准答案”提出了置疑。并证明了动辄以参考译文刹车现象的不可行性。 其理论依据在于：首先，由于源语作者的国家文化习俗各异，创作背景各异，而 译者的性格和生活的背景也不尽相同，在不同时代所译作品难免会带有各自特 色，因而不同时代，不同作者，不同的译者间必有差异则不可避免。第二，也是 很重要的一点，从读者的接受理论和接受美学理论来看，不同年龄，不同阶层， 不同时代以及不同背景的读者，接受能力和审美观都会有所不同，译者应该根据 所针对的读者作具体分析，确定译文旨向，而不同旨向下的译文作品便不免有不 同风味的特点而带有译者的审美情趣，同样，译文读者亦可采摘不同旨向下不同 译者的译品，从而丰富翻译园地。 本文第一章简单介绍了参考译文多元化研究的必要性和论文的设计。 第二章 从读者的接受理论和接受美学理论入手，谈及其起源与发展。第三章在前两章的 基础上具体分析了译文应该多元化的原因。第四章为译文多元化的实证研究。第 五章为本篇论文的最后一章，总结了译文多元化研究的必要性与不足之处，提出 v 几点希望和建议，为日后研究提供些许资料。本问的创新点在于提倡开掘译者能 动思考机制，施惠于不同读者，以体现翻译多视角，多元化的文化传播价值。 关键词：多元化；参考译文；译本 ii abstract there is a long history of translation theory studies which pay much attention to the source and target languages, texts, translation criteria and so on. a large number of translation studies focus on the comparison and try to find standard for the translated versions to be equivalent to the original text, which makes equivalent and faithfulness constitute the main content of translation studies. in order to achieve satisfied and perfect version, translation studies usually emphasize comparisons of different translated versions, especially on the part of literary translation. the main idea of this thesis is many- faceted version, the idea of which is that translated works should not rigidly adhere to the so- accepted “ standard version” . the time meaning of many- faceted translated works aims to criticize the idea that “ translated works should be absolutely faithful and equivalent to the original works” , and to prove the impossibility of the phenomenon that translated works are usually apt to be braked by the standard version. the main reasons are as follows: first of all, for the writers, they are different in using the language, different in culture, different in custom and creating background, while for the translators, they are different in writing styles, living background and era, and therefore, different versions are surely on their way to come. we should be tolerate, permit and accept them. secondly, based on the readers reception theory and receptive esthetics theory, readers in different ages, different social status, different living times and background are sure to have different reception ability and aesthetics. translators should present different versions iii depending on different readers, by this, all kinds of readers can enjoy the works they like and can have a wide reading range of the foreign creations. the first chapter introduces the basic idea of many- faceted translated works and the layout of this thesis. the second chapter refers to the origin and development of readers reception theory and receptive esthetics theory. on the base of the former two chapters, the third chapter analyses the reasons of many- faceted translated works in detail. the forth chapter is a practical study on the possibility of many- faceted translated works. the fifth chapter is the last chapter of this thesis which summarizes the necessity and shortage of the study on the possibility of many- faceted translated works and proposes some hope and suggestion to offer some data for the study in the future. the new idea of this thesis is to propose the principle that translators should ponder dynamically and take care of different readers to embody many- faceted translated works. key words: many- faceted, translated works, version i acknowledgments i would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my supervisor professor li yunqi for his thought- provoking discussion, insightful criticism, continuous encouragement and careful modification, which have greatly helped me with this thesis. he taught me not only on the subject of translation, but also on the way of thinking. i am also indebted to all my teachers who have taught me during my three- year study in the school of foreign languages in shenyang normal university, particularly to professor yan yixun and professor shi guoqiang for their excellent teaching and enlightening suggestions. 1 chapter 1 introduction 1.1 thesis statement the purpose of this study is to take a new look at the reception theory and the receptive esthetic theory, concerning the translated works and to mainly verify why translated works should have many- faceted versions, so as to present a new angle of the research within the field. 1.2 need for the study there is a long history of translation theory studies which pay much attention to the source language text, target language text, and translation criteria and so on. a large number of translation studies focus on the comparison between the source language text and target language text and try to find standard for the translated versions to be equivalent to the original text, which makes equivalent and faithfulness constitute the main content of translation studies. in order to achieve satisfied and perfect version translation studies usually emphasize comparisons of different translated versions, especially in the literary translation. translated works shouldn t follow the only “ standard version” . the time meaning of many- faceted translated works aims to criticize the idea that “ translated works should be absolutely faithful and equivalent to the original works” , and to prove the impossibility of the phenomenon that translated works break at the standard version. the main reasons are as follows: first of all, for the writers, they are different 2 in source languages, culture, custom and creating background, while for the translators, they are different in writing styles, living background and era, and therefore, we should permits and accept different versions (冯庆华, 2002, p. 471). secondly, also an important point, from the angle of readers reception theory and readers receptive esthetics theory, readers in different ages, different social status, different living times and background have different reception ability and aesthetics. translators should give different versions depending on different readers, by this, all kinds of readers can enjoy the works they like and can have a wide reading range of the foreign creations. translators should ponder dynamically and take care of different readers to embody many- faceted translated works. 1.3 statement of objectives the study will achieve the following goals: to identify problems in translation criterion, to find out the way to many- faceted translation, to clarify that what factors make translation many- faceted. 1.4 layout of the thesis this thesis is mainly composed of five chapters with an introduction and a conclusion. chapter two, literature review, is about two theories, covering a traditional view and a contemporary view of translation, with some ideas, which are based on the reception theories put forward by some researchers. summary is also 3 developed around the topic. chapter three is the discussion of the reasons why works should be many- faceted. during the process of the empirical study, i try to prove this idea. first, readers reception ability is different due to many factors. second, there also exist a lot of elements which affect the version, such as the literary genre. the conclusion and suggestions are made afterwards. in chapter four, focus is on further implications so as to shed some light on the function and importance of translation, based on my own study. 1.5 data presentation and analysis techniques on the whole, this is a qualitative study. it is mainly presented and analyzed in a narrative form with examples calculated according to some works. case analysis is to use some facts to set examples for demonstrating its research. in this paper, this method is used to do some comparative analysis of several widely spread poems or just poetic sentences through which people could get a clear view of the study result. the comparative method is used to achieve a qualitative investigation by comparing a variety of aspects in literary workstranslation style, theories, lexical choice, sentence structure, figure of speech, etc. literature search is used to get a good understanding of the whole matters related with anything discussed here. through a reorganization of some relative literary material, we could get a good knowledge of the different culture of different countries and the statements of translations on a certain layer. 4 1.6 means of obtaining data information concerning translation theories was collected from books, and periodicals from shenyang normal university library. some was searched from the internet. 5 chapter 2 literature review 2.1 a brief introduction to the background of the research the notion of reception theory was put forward when r.c. holub firstly mentioned i n the preface to his reception theory: a critical introduction makes a distinction between reception theory, aesthetics of reception and readers- response criticism. the notion of receptive esthetics theory was put forward when this concept firstly was brought up in 1967 by hans robert jauss who was a professor of literature and art in gemany konstanz university. the focus of receptive esthetics is the accepters and the acceptance. jauss s idea is that a works, even a printed work, is sill semi- finished before people s reading, besides translation criterion, much more should be involved and analyzed in the factors of affecting many- faceted translation words. up to now, the notion has gained wide acceptance and communicative notice and has become one of the most popular approaches in translation. it draws intense attention and arouses treat interest of researchers and translators in cross- cultural communication, which, in turn, has broadened the scope of many- faceted translated works research. however, with the birth and development of reception theory and receptive esthetics theory in the past, more and more attention has been drawn to the translation criterion and the only standard translated works. researchers begin to exploit this and according to the theories of translation, but many- faceted translated works is still not valued as much as it should be. 6 2.2 a theory from reader s angle- - - - reception theory reception theory is mainly a literary theory, in a strict sense, a literary criticism theory. it is an important school of contemporary western literary theory. as a new- typed paradigm and a newly- rising methodology in literary research, it leads a whole new start in literary study. reception theory is not a general study of aesthetic feeling of literature works, and is not the study of appreciation and criticism of literary theory, but a separate theoretical system which is based on the hermeneutics and phenomenology. in a sense, it can be thought as a part of hermeneutics, or as the latest development of both hermeneutics and phenomenology. there are several obvious differences between reception theory and other literary theories. firstly, the concept of literature work is different. for other literary theory, the text is the work itself. the two terms refer to the same thing. but for reception theory, the text is not equal with the work. reception theory considers any literary text has its indeterminacy and achieves its real meaning after readers reading. without readers reading, the text is not a complete work. secondly, the role of reader is different. reader becomes one of the elements of the work. the readers reception of the text is the re- concretion of the text and meanwhile is the process of the realization of the literature work. thirdly, and also the most important one is that the status of the readers are different. in reception theory, reader is the first crucial factor. reception theorists break down the text- centered linguistic system. they hold that the meaning of a literary work is achieved in an ongoing process of interpretation by the receiver. therefore a work becomes a complete work of art. in addition, they 7 claim that among authors, works, and recipients, a certain priority must be given to the role of the recipient as an active rather than a passive role. jauss asserts in toward an aesthetics of reception that “ in the triangle of author, work, and public, the last is no passive part, no chain of mere reactions, but rather itself an energy formative of history. the historical life of a literary work is unthinkable without the active participation of its addressees. for it is only through the process of its mediation that the work enters into the changing horizon- of- experience of a continuity in which the perpetual inversion occurs from simple reception to critical understanding, from passive to active reception, from recognized aesthetic norms to a new production that surpasses them.” as a major literary theory, reception theory has profound meaning on literary translation. the rise of the status of readers also promotes the translator in translation. in the process of translation, the translator is the reader of the original text first, and then is the author or creator of the translated version, which achieves realization by the target text readers. during the process of translation, reception theory provides an appropriate prospective to study the translator. in other words, as a special reader of the original text, the translator gets more and more attention. so in this chapter i will introduce the reception theory and some important terms first. 2.2.1 reception theory defined r.c. holub, in the preface to his reception theory: a critical introduction makes a distinction between reception theory, aesthetics of reception and readers- response criticism. according to holub, reception theory “ refers throughout 8 to a general shift in concern from the author and the work to the text and reader. it s used, therefore, as an umbrella term and encompasses both hans robert jauss s and wolfgang iser s projects as well as empirical researches and the traditional occupation with influence ” . aesthetics of reception, in contrast, is restricted to hans robert jauss s early theoretical work while reader- response criticism is another umbrella term that includes diverse explorations established by norman holland, jonathan culler and stanley fish as well as “ a general shift in attention from the author of the work to the text- reader pole” represented by iser. according to holuc s definition, reception theory not only includes the ideas of jauss, iser and other theorists of the constance school but also the thoughts of their predecessors like hans- gorege gadamer and roman ingarden for the sake of continuity in their theories. but this term doesn t include reader- response criticism. 2.2.2 the beginning of reception theory reception theory was born in the university of constance in germany in the middle of 1960s and soon it swept across the whole european and american literature circle. the formation of reception theory has a lot of historical sources, such as russian s formalism, prague s structuralism, hermeneutics, and phenomenology and so on. american theorist meyer howard abrams raised four literary criticism factors: the world, the author, the work and the reader in the mirror and the lamp: romantic theory and the critical tradition, which is the first time to consider readers in literary studies. from then on people began to study the relationship between readers and the work, which became the foundation of reception theory. 9 among all the theoretical bases, hermeneutics and phenomenology influence reception theory most. ingarden developed the central conception of internationality, and put forward such ideas as, indeterminacy, and concretization and subsequently applied those ideas into the field of aesthetics and literary criticism. modern hermeneutics absorbs many important theories and gradually develops them into an increasingly mature methodology of humanities, which not only has significant impact on modern literary works but also directly enlightens reception theory. these ideas had tremendous effect on the reception theory. in heidegger s mind, pre- understanding decides its understanding of the text. hans- georg gadamer attaches great importance to the dialogue- relationship between the literary text and its interpreter. he believes that the meaning of the text is achieved by the reader after the fusion of readers horizon with the horizon of the text during the process, and the meaning of the text is not closed or static but always open- ended and dynamic. gadamer s philosophic hermeneutics lays greater emphasis on the dialogue, therefore provides significant philosophic basis for the reception theory. greatly influenced by all these theories and their valuable ideas, german literary historians and theorists hans robert jauss and wolfgang iser, the two major representatives, raise reception theory. actually, in 1967, jauss gave a lecture “ literary history as a challenge to literary scholarship” which put an unprecedented emphasis on the reader s active role in the historical accounts of literature and the relation between what a work asks of the reader and what a reader expects of the work. while iser on the other hand, focused on another aspect of this dynamic relation, the 10 interaction between the text and the reader. both the two representatives became aware of the role of the readers. later jauss s lecture in 1967 was recognized as the birth of reception theory. 2.2.3 the development of reception theory