Culture Translation 文化翻译课程教案

1、课程教案chapter onedefinition of translation and translation principlestranslation is getting more and more important, which is known to all. and what is translation, anyway? now lets see the following:according to the english dictionary, translation is the process of a written or spoken rendering of th

2、e meaning of a word, speech, book, or other text, in another language. but in the practical society, different people have different opinions. the famous english linguist geoffrey leech thought in his book semantics that translation is to find a way to express the sense of a word in another language

3、. chairman of ita （国际译联），professor anna lenowa said in the book the theoretical essentials of general translation(1985), “as a process, translation is a spoken or written activity, with the purpose of making the spoken or written speeches (writings) existing in a language reappear in another languag

4、e and keeping the invariance of the contents and quality of the original text and the correctness of the original author.” the professor went on saying “as the result of translating activity, translation is the analoque of the original text. the ideal translation is the ideal analoque of the origina

5、l text, which is produced in the new society, culture and the actual language and plays a role in the realization of the reality.” people shouldnt regard “analoque” here as the absoluteness of the original text, the word-for-word language analogy and inflexible duplication and should understand it a

6、s the analogy of the entire system, that is, the analogy of structural function. according yang shi-zhang(20003: 73. foreign languages): there are two translating ways-symbol translation and sense translation. the former refers to translation conducted at the level of symbol form. translators dont g

7、ive deliberate consideration to the essence of the appeared/existing symbol but respond audibly to it directly. this translation is automatic, which is transformed just like from one form of a language symbol to another form of another language symbol. sense translation requires the translator first

8、 to determine the referent(sense) of the language symbol or the speech situation, then try to find the equivalent symbol in the target language. yang yansong thinks that translation is not only the transformation and contrast of two languages but also the comparison and blending of two cultures(yang

9、, p103, translation theory in hunan). cao hejian thinks that translation is a transforming process of a language and also a transforming /converting process of ways of thinking.(cao, p89, translation theory in hunan). the american translation theorist eugene a. nida believes thet the translation we

10、call in the target language refers to the information reproducing the original text by using the closest and the most natural equivalence from semanteme to style. what nida states here is accepted by most of the people in the circle of translation, for this statement not only emphasizes most closely

11、 but also most naturally “to reproduce the information of the original text”, that is to say , the translated text should be faithful not only to the original text, but also to the writing style so that it is favourable for the readers of the translated text to achieve the same effect as the readers

12、 of the original text. according to the new encyclopaedia britannica, macropaedia, translation is a continuous concomitant of contact between two mutually incomprehensible tongues and one that does not lead either to suppression or extension of either is translation. from what is mentioned above, th

13、e essence of translation is a cross-language transformational activity, though the translators both at home and abroad and some authoritative dictionaries have given the definition of translation with different emphases. from the angle of culture, translation is even an activity of cross-cultural ex

14、change in the form of phones and words. in ancient times when there were no written languages, translation only dealt with oral interpretation, later on there were written languages, so written translation appeared. with the application of the computers, the founding of semiology (semiotics) and the

15、 improvement of the photoelectric sign and code techniques, there appear new ways of translation such as man-machine intertranslation and mechanical/machine translation, so that we can add something new to the definition of translation. according to an english-chinese dictionary of modern science an

16、d technology(1980, shanghai press of science and technology), “translation is to change the information of the computer from one language into another one, or change the characters from one form into another one.”as far as the function is concerned, translation is the tie and bridge by using the lan

17、guage as a tool to link different cultures. but how we can give full play to the tie and bridge of cross-cultural(intercultural) exchange correctly and effectively and how we can express the cultural information correctly, closely and fluently that one language bears/contains have been for ages the

18、aims that scholars of foreign languages especially the translators have been paying close attention to and have been in pursuit of and what is more, the important subjects that the translators and translation theorists both at home and abroad have been approaching and discussing.in the history of mo

19、dern translation, the first real western monograph on translation theory, i am afraid, is the book essay on the principles of translating written by a famous english scholar, the professor of edinburgh university, whose name is alexander f. tytler, and the translation theorist brought up the three p

20、rinciples of translation in the book published in 1792:(1) a translation should give a complete transcription of the ideas of the original work;(2) the style and manner of writing should be of the same character as that of the original;(3) a translation should have all the ease of the original compo

21、sition. it is generally thought that, according to the order of the arrangement, the principles(1) and (2) reflect the faithfulness of ideas, style and manner of writing, and the principle(3) reflects the faithfulness of expression, showing that the translator should not just imitate the form of the

22、 original but try to know the authors soul and make it speak the authors mind, thats to say, the translator should try to grasp the spirit of the original and express it in very good target language instead of the original. there is no doubt about it that tytlers three principles of translating have

23、 had great and far-reaching influence in the circles of translation and laid the foundation of/for the theory of translating work.ma jian-zhong, an expert of translation at the end of the qing dynasty in china, wrote a book titled a suggestion of setting up a translating academy and he pointed out,

24、if you take a book, youll have to read it over and over so as to grasp its spiritual essence, try to figure out its style and understand its mood and translate it with great facility, and the translated text must be exactly like the original one without the slightest error, and the readers can get a

25、s much from the translated text as from the original one, only such translation can be called the first-class translation.（一书到手，经营反复，确知其意旨之所在，而摹写其神情，仿佛其语气，然后心悟神解，振笔而书，译成之文适其所译而止，而曾无毫发出入其间，夫而后能使阅者得之益与观原文无异是则为善译也已。）1 here ma jian-zhong has given us such exposition which was quite fresh in sight of his

26、 time, telling us what attitude the translator should have and what should be kept as the standards of translation and what the translating process is. as mr ma didnt translate some works, people have paid no attention to him an his theory, but people have had different opinions on what he stated: “

27、the translated text should be exactly like the original one without the slightest error.” can it be realized that you translate some works without the slightest srror? i think this is an impractical idea-an ideal. with the exception of this, we should admit that most of what he said is of great use

28、and can serve our translation today, especially the translating process. if the translators had noticed his theory, the translation of china might have been much better. its a pity that his translation theory produced a very limited influence on translation in the past. yan fu (18541921), living in

29、the late qing dynasty and the republic of china, was then a famous translator and through a lot of translation practice , he summed up the three translating standards of three chinese characters in 1898(the other saying is in 1897):“in translation, there are three aspects difficult to bring about: f

30、idelity/faithfulness, smoothness/fluency and elegance. it is no easy work to realize fidelity/faithfulness! if there is only fidelity/ faithfulness without smoothness/fluency, the translation doesnt amount to translation. from here we can see fluency/ smoothness is of great importance.”(译事三难：信、达、雅。求

31、其信已大难矣！顾信矣不达，虽译犹不译也，则达尚焉。)whats mentioned above is what yan fu used to measure/judge what can be known as excellent versions. as a matter of fact, yan fus three translating standards of three chinese characters were first brought up by zhi qian（支谦），a translator living in the period of the three king

32、doms but its yan fu who took the standards as the only model or pattern. the later generations have had many discussions about his standards. generally speeking, people think that the relationslip between “faithfulness” and “fluency ” has been clearly said by mr yan, which has laid the foundation of

33、 chinas translation theory and people agree with what he has said about the two principles. but they have different viewpoints on the third principle “elegance”, in fact, they havent made it clear that his “elegance” puts stress on figure of speech and style. some people compare yan fu with alexande

34、r f. tytler, and they said that the formers three translating standards of three chinese characters and the latters three principles of translating are the same in essence, the only difference is that both of them used different languages of different cultural features and characteristics. “fidelity

35、” refers to faithfulness or loyalty, “ fluency” refers to the quality of being fluent and “elegance” refers to grace or good taste.“fidelity” is equivalent to “giving a complete transcription of the ideas of the original work”, “fluency” is equivalent to “have the ease of the original composition” a

36、nd “elegance” is equivalent to “the style and manner of writing should be of the same character with that of the original”.fu lei (19081966), bron in shanghai, once studied in paris university, etc, and in the 1950s and 1960s he published many of his important opinions on translation. as a famous co

37、ntemporary translation experience and had his original view, saying “in the case of the effect, translating is like painting from a copy what to desire and get is not alike in appearance but in spiritmay as well suppose that the ideal translation seems written in chinese by the original author” this

38、 comes from this chinese passage by fu lei: 以效果而论，翻译应当像临画一样，所求的不在形似而神似。以实际工作而论，翻译比临画更难。临画与原画，素材相同（颜色、画布，或绢），法则相同（色彩学，解剖学，透视学）。译本与原作，文字既不侔，规则又大异。各种文字各有特色，各有无可模仿优点，各有无法补救的缺陷，同时又各有不能侵犯的戒律。像英、法、德那样接近的语言，尚且有许多难以互译的地方；中西文字的杆路远过于此，要求传神达意，铢悉称，自非死抓字典，按照原文句法拚凑堆砌所能济事。this is fu leis famous “theory on being ali

39、ke in spirit”(or: similarity in spirit), which has given a vivid description and a close metaphor of translation. in the 1960s, fu lei said in a letter to luo xin-zhang: “传神云云，谈何容易！年岁经验愈增，对原作体会愈感不足。领语为一事，用中文表达为又一事。况东方人与西方人之思想方式有基本分歧，我人重综合，重归纳，重暗示，重含蓄；西方人则重分析，细微曲折，挖掘惟恐不尽，描写惟恐不周；此种mentalite（精神面貌）殊难彼此融

40、洽交流。同为metaphore（隐喻），一经翻译，意义即已晦涩，遑论情趣。不若西欧文字彼此同源，比喻典故大半一致。”according to what is listed above, it can be seen that in his theory he always lays emphasis on “theory on being alike in spirit”, and many of his other opinions reflect this kind of theory. what he has said is quite practical and reasonable,

41、 and people have accepted it as a standard to judge whether the translation is of high quality or not. it is quite right to say that fu leis theory on translation has produced great influence on chinas translation theory, which is probably second to yan fus standards of three chinese characters “fid

42、elity, fluency and elegance”.feidow rolve (transliteration; 费道罗夫),a famous scholar of the former soviet union, published his book essentials of translation theory in 1953, and in his book he held that target language should “give a complete and correct transcription of ideas of the original text(sou

43、rce language) in figure of speech and function.” translators of china think of his theory as “theory of equivalence” but many people think this kind of proposal is a utopian one and it is no use making a study of it. however, it is advised that people should have a try at it.qian zhong-shu, born in

44、wuxi, jiangsu province in 1910, has made remarkable contributions to translation theory, and this famous scholar was graduated from the department of foreign languages of qinghua university and later he studied in qxford university, etc. mr qian has created his “theory of sublimation”, he expounded

45、that the highest standard of literary translation is “hua”(化) (digestion), when a translator converts a language into another one, his or her version can completely keep the original flavour as well as shows no signs of stiff word-for-word translation because of the conventional differentiation of l

46、anguage and culture. mr qians theory emphasizes that versions that are faithful to the original texts dont read like the translated texts, for the original texts themselves dont exist in the form of the translated texts, but he admitted that “the wholly complete hua(digestion or sublimation) is only

47、 an impractical ideal”. and now mr qians translatin theory has been accepted as another theoretical standard to evaluate whether the translation is of high quality or not.with the development of linguistics, semantics, pragmatics, stylistics, information science, communication science, semiotics, so

48、cial semiotics, social linguistics, peoples viewpoints on translation and its standards are becoming more and more scientific. eugene a. nida, the american translation theorist, suggests in his book the theory and practice of translation (1982)“ the translation should transcribe the infomation of th

49、e original, and the translator must strive for equivalence ”then “equivalent” and “functional equivalente” become the hot spots of argument (at issue). some people express their agreement, others express their disagreement, and those who express their disagreement think that some differences between

50、 language and culture bring much difficulty to symbolism in their conversion, which makes “only an allusive ideal.”nida brought up the theory of “equivalent response” in the 1980s. according to him, what should be firstly considered in judging a translation(a translated text) is to check what the re

51、sponse of the translation readers with that of the original readers. if the response of the former is the same as or equivalent to that of the latter, then the translation is thought of as the ideal one. for example, nida once translated the bible and he did it in plain english. it is said that his

52、english translation of the book is very popular with the readers, which shows that his theory has obviously directive function on translation practice.here id like to remind you not to get confused about nidas theory of “equivalent response” and ferdow rolves “theory of equivalence”, the former take

53、s the impression(image) of the readers experience as the standard of evaluation from the acceptable perspective of the readers, while the latter just measures the standards of translation from the characteristics of translation itself.more and more translation theories have come into existence and w

54、hich you like better or best just depends on your opinions on each of them. but we cant say this one is bad, that one is worse or the third one is the worst, and neither can we say this one is perfect, that one is correct and the third one is ideal. just as peter newmark has said, there doesnt exist

55、 perfect, ideal or “correct” translation. chapter two definition of culturesomeone says that the word “culture” is an alien word coming from german “kultur”, which can be dated back to a very long time ago, when it referred to a very long time ago, when it referred to reclamation of land and cultiva

56、tion of plants and physical mind, especially to the cultivation of artistic and moral ability and natural gift (see culture and language, compiled by wang fu-xiang, etal, 341). form the angle of cross-cultural exchanges, the word “culture”, which was referred to the level of agenda by people engaged

57、 in foreign languages, began in the 1980s when china had just reformed and opened to the outside world. at that time the chinese people were aware that great communicative barriers caused by cultural variation existed in cultural exchanges to the outside world. naturally in school and college educat

58、ion, including the secondary specialized education and the higher specialization, people attached great importance to the essentiality and urgency of culture infusion, for, at that time, cultural clashes caused by cultural variation kept reaching their ears. and many ridiculous mistakes brought abou

59、t the failure of communication. it was said that the cultural clashes did bring about some economic losses.according to some data, the word “culture” existed in ancient chinese, earlier than that in the german language. the chinese etymology says that the chinese word “wen ”refers to the unified formal ritual and its rules and regulations including the legal clauses, that the chinese word “hua” refers to the nature, or the natural functions. generally speaking, in the words of our