(完整版)翻译理论书评(程思茜G13201039)

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2020年07月30日 22:45
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广东水利职业技术学院-座谈



Afterthoughts upon Bassnett’s 《Translation Studies》
In this new-born while in-depth field of translation, a variety of
monographs、text books abound in this blooming, glamorous garden, then
I choose one glistening rose in full blossom----Translation Studies(the
third edition) as my favorite book to undertake a report. The
writer---Susan Bassnett is a well-known translation theorist winning her
reputation all over the world and celebrated for her tremendous, fruitful
translation monographs, translations and compilations. Her research
range varies from comparative literature, translation studies, English
literature, dramatic productions to the translation phenomena in
postcolonial period. Besides, some of her seminal works contributed to
the establishment and development of translation, like Constructing
cultures: Essays on Literary Translation, Comparative Literature: A
critical Introduction, blaze the trail for the cultural translation school.
And this book makes a name for her proving to be one of her most
influential works.
This book consists of four main parts: “Preface” to the third edition,
“Introduction”, “Contents” and “Conclusion”. In the preface, Bassnett
elaborated upon the cause, status quo and prospect of this discipline and
also sketched the background knowledge. Then, in the introduction part,
she pointed out the pivotal goal of this book, which is an attempt to
outline the scope of that discipline, to give some indication of the kind of
work that has been done so far and to suggest directions in which further
research is needed. Most importantly, it is indeed a discipline in its own
right: not merely a minor branch of other disciplines. She also holds that
translation study is one kind of discipline deeply, firmly implanted in the
practice. So the combination of theory and practice in this discipline is of
great value and importance. After that, she used four research
atmospheres to construct the range of this discipline: History of
Translation, Translation in the TL culture, Translation and Linguistics,
Translation and Poetics. The “contents” part comprises three chapters:
central issues, history of translation, specific problems of literary
translation. In the first chapter, it touches upon issues like Language and
culture, Types of translation, Decoding and recoding, Problems of



equivalence, Loss and gain, etc. Bassnett freed from the shackles of the
old, clichéd debates on some issues, provided her new insight into theses
issues. In the second chapter, Bassnett cherished the history as thread to
give a comb of the different views in various periods of western culture,
and pondered over the effects and change of functions of translation. It
covered periods from “The Romans” to “The Renaissance” to “The
seventeenth, eighteenth centuries” until “The twentieth century”. In the
last chapter, at the beginning, she compared the close relationship
between theory and practice to that between driver and mechanic. And
finally she suggested that, in terms of a careful analysis of cases and
examples, translators would give rise to different specific issues after
choosing disparate translation criteria. She introduced different
translation criteria in the process of translating poetry, prose and dramatic
texts, cited some examples from original works for our reference. In
“conclusion”, she confessed that some other vast amount of material was
left undiscussed, such as: machine translation, cinematic texts, oral
translation or interpreting; these are like fly in the ointment. Above
mentioned is the general outline of the whole book.
Actually, this marks a significant milestone in the development and
strengthening of this discipline. The biggest contribution is that it
circumscribes the basic research domain of translation study as the
separate, independent discipline. It also highlights that translation study
should focus on the cultural level to have the whole meditation upon
translation, which opens the door of “cultural turn”. Secondly, this book
puts forward some basic principles of cultural translation school. Before,
the translation field was overwhelmed with the linguistic perspectives on
translation, to name just a few, Nida’s “formal equivalence” and
“dynamic equivalence”, Newmark’s “semantic and communicative
translation”, Toury’s different kinds of norms. It’s from this book that the
general structure and blueprint of cultural translation school has been
gradually constructed. What’s more, she even expounded on the basic
notions of this school in the first edition of this book: A focus should be
pinned on the historic, cultural background behind texts, what criteria
decided translators’ strategies in translation, and we should attempt at



recognizing how the complicated process of controlling texts produced.
Thirdly, there are some minor while still glittering lights cast upon
readers from the book. It gives us a comparatively systematic line of the
translation history in western culture. Attention to “history” here means
not merely the main translation principles, strategies in different periods,
but also the cultural and historic elements of SL and TL texts. Besides,
she might be courageous enough to challenge, or even topple down the
core principles of “equivalence”, “fidelity”, “translatability” in traditional
translation views, and regarded the translation history, some other cultural
views as being set in the equal place with linguistics. Maybe these radical
and audacious views incurred criticism and doubts from other translators
and theorists.
Every leaf has two sides; this book is no exception. Since the
publication, this book has been leveled criticism, suspicion from different
voices. Generally, the structure of this book seems to be general and
sweeping. It falls short of the specific, systematic research methods and
doesn’t provide us with some instrumental principles, methods, strategy
easily to be practiced. So in some aspects, it doesn’t delve into the
broader and deeper part of some theories, just like a dragonfly skimming
the water surface. In spite of her promotion of combining the theory with
practice, in translating poetry and dramatic texts, it’s obvious there is a
lack of relevant theories supporting the analysis of original works in
detail. More specifically, I was skeptical about her defining of
equivalence in this book: the first lays on an emphasis on the special
problems of semantics and on the transfer of semantic transfer from SL to
TL, the second explores the question of equivalence of literary texts.
After contemplation, the doubts exist in whether it’s scientific and overall.
Besides literary texts, other types of texts’ problems of equivalence seem
to be ignored. Her two lines can’t cover the core nature of equivalence,
not to mention, the gamut of it. Then, the translation of dramatic texts
attracted my interests, esp. the principle of “playability”. It indeed makes
huge progress in that it moves away from adhering to the original texts
too closely to focusing on the performable aspects of texts. However,
after considerate reading, problems loom large. There seems to lack the



specific, working principles or methods. And in the practical translation
of dramatic texts, even if there are setting criteria of “playability”, they
will vary accompanied by the change of different cultures, periods, text
types. What’s worse, “playability” in translating dramatic texts sometimes
fall victim to other sides’ full advantages. So in the directors, theatre
managers’ eyes, the SL texts were anything but sacred, and were reshaped
according to very basic needs---the audience expectations, size of
company, repertoire of performers, limitation of time and space, etc. So
they reshaped the text actually in order to satisfy their own benefits to
maximum, and used the term as an excuse to exercise greater liberties
with the text than convention allowed. Bassnett herself also realized the
impossibility to exercise this “playability”, as a result, after 1985, she
gave up the “playability”, then began to run counter to her former
theories in a series of papers, namely: Ways through the Labyrinth:
Strategies and Methods for Translating Theatre Texts; Translating for the
theatre---Textual complexities; Translating for the theatre: The Case
Against Performability. She once admitted that performability was
nothing but a human illusion, finally vanishing into thin air in reality. She
also considered other precious elements in the performance part,
compensating for the loss in the TT, for example, encoded gestic moves,
kinesic, paralinguistic signs, deictic units all play an indispensable role in
the performance of dramatic texts. So the dramatic SL can be displayed
vividly in fidelity by the use of these elements in the actors’ part.
Differences in register involving age, gender, social positions,
consistency in monologue should take priority over an abstract,
individualistic notion of performability. So all these encourage and force
her to abandon “playability” resolutely and determinedly.
To sum up, this book, just like a beam of sunshine, illuminates the
whole translation field; also like a glistening pearl, glitters incessantly to
eternity. Despite its tiny weakness, its brilliant lights will never be
overshadowed, so it continues to exert profound influence upon
generations after generations who read it.



Afterthoughts upon Bassnett’s 《Translation Studies》
In this new-born while in-depth field of translation, a variety of
monographs、text books abound in this blooming, glamorous garden, then
I choose one glistening rose in full blossom----Translation Studies(the
third edition) as my favorite book to undertake a report. The
writer---Susan Bassnett is a well- known translation theorist winning her
reputation all over the world and celebrated for her tremendous, fruitful
translation monographs, translations and compilations. Her research
range varies from comparative literature, translation studies, English
literature, dramatic productions to the translation phenomena in
postcolonial period. Besides, some of her seminal works contributed to
the establishment and development of translation, like Constructing
cultures: Essays on Literary Translation, Comparative Literature: A
critical Introduction, blaze the trail for the cultural translation school.
And this book makes a name for her proving to be one of her most
influential works.
This book consists of four main parts: “Preface” to the third edition,
“Introduction”, “Contents” and “Conclusion”. In the preface, Bassnett
elaborated upon the cause, status quo and prospect of this discipline and
also sketched the background knowledge. Then, in the introduction part,
she pointed out the pivotal goal of this book, which is an attempt to
outline the scope of that discipline, to give some indication of the kind of
work that has been done so far and to suggest directions in which further
research is needed. Most importantly, it is indeed a discipline in its own
right: not merely a minor branch of other disciplines. She also holds that
translation study is one kind of discipline deeply, firmly implanted in the
practice. So the combination of theory and practice in this discipline is of
great value and importance. After that, she used four research
atmospheres to construct the range of this discipline: History of
Translation, Translation in the TL culture, Translation and Linguistics,
Translation and Poetics. The “contents” part comprises three chapters:
central issues, history of translation, specific problems of literary
translation. In the first chapter, it touches upon issues like Language and
culture, Types of translation, Decoding and recoding, Problems of



equivalence, Loss and gain, etc. Bassnett freed from the shackles of the
old, clichéd debates on some issues, provided her new insight into theses
issues. In the second chapter, Bassnett cherished the history as thread to
give a comb of the different views in various periods of western culture,
and pondered over the effects and change of functions of translation. It
covered periods from “The Romans” to “The Renaissance” to “The
seventeenth, eighteenth centuries” until “The twentieth century”. In the
last chapter, at the beginning, she compared the close relationship
between theory and practice to that between driver and mechanic. And
finally she suggested that, in terms of a careful analysis of cases and
examples, translators would give rise to different specific issues after
choosing disparate translation criteria. She introduced different
translation criteria in the process of translating poetry, prose and dramatic
texts, cited some examples from original works for our reference. In
“conclusion”, she confessed that some other vast amount of material was
left undiscussed, such as: machine translation, cinematic texts, oral
translation or interpreting; these are like fly in the ointment. Above
mentioned is the general outline of the whole book.
Actually, this marks a significant milestone in the development and
strengthening of this discipline. The biggest contribution is that it
circumscribes the basic research domain of translation study as the
separate, independent discipline. It also highlights that translation study
should focus on the cultural level to have the whole meditation upon
translation, which opens the door of “cultural turn”. Secondly, this book
puts forward some basic principles of cultural translation school. Before,
the translation field was overwhelmed with the linguistic perspectives on
translation, to name just a few, Nida’s “formal equivalence” and
“dynamic equivalence”, Newmark’s “semantic and communicative
translation”, Toury’s different kinds of norms. It’s from this book that the
general structure and blueprint of cultural translation school has been
gradually constructed. What’s more, she even expounded on the basic
notions of this school in the first edition of this book: A focus should be
pinned on the historic, cultural background behind texts, what criteria
decided translators’ strategies in translation, and we should attempt at



recognizing how the complicated process of controlling texts produced.
Thirdly, there are some minor while still glittering lights cast upon
readers from the book. It gives us a comparatively systematic line of the
translation history in western culture. Attention to “history” here means
not merely the main translation principles, strategies in different periods,
but also the cultural and historic elements of SL and TL texts. Besides,
she might be courageous enough to challenge, or even topple down the
core principles of “equivalence”, “fidelity”, “translatability” in traditional
translation views, and regarded the translation history, some other cultural
views as being set in the equal place with linguistics. Maybe these radical
and audacious views incurred criticism and doubts from other translators
and theorists.
Every leaf has two sides; this book is no exception. Since the
publication, this book has been leveled criticism, suspicion from different
voices. Generally, the structure of this book seems to be general and
sweeping. It falls short of the specific, systematic research methods and
doesn’t provide us with some instrumental principles, methods, strategy
easily to be practiced. So in some aspects, it doesn’t delve into the
broader and deeper part of some theories, just like a dragonfly skimming
the water surface. In spite of her promotion of combining the theory with
practice, in translating poetry and dramatic texts, it’s obvious there is a
lack of relevant theories supporting the analysis of original works in
detail. More specifically, I was skeptical about her defining of
equivalence in this book: the first lays on an emphasis on the special
problems of semantics and on the transfer of semantic transfer from SL to
TL, the second explores the question of equivalence of literary texts.
After contemplation, the doubts exist in whether it’s scientific and overall.
Besides literary texts, other types of texts’ problems of equivalence seem
to be ignored. Her two lines can’t cover the core nature of equivalence,
not to mention, the gamut of it. Then, the translation of dramatic texts
attracted my interests, esp. the principle of “playability”. It indeed makes
huge progress in that it moves away from adhering to the original texts
too closely to focusing on the performable aspects of texts. However,
after considerate reading, problems loom large. There seems to lack the



specific, working principles or methods. And in the practical translation
of dramatic texts, even if there are setting criteria of “playability”, they
will vary accompanied by the change of different cultures, periods, text
types. What’s worse, “playability” in translating dramatic texts sometimes
fall victim to other sides’ full advantages. So in the directors, theatre
managers’ eyes, the SL texts were anything but sacred, and were reshaped
according to very basic needs---the audience expectations, size of
company, repertoire of performers, limitation of time and space, etc. So
they reshaped the text actually in order to satisfy their own benefits to
maximum, and used the term as an excuse to exercise greater liberties
with the text than convention allowed. Bassnett herself also realized the
impossibility to exercise this “playability”, as a result, after 1985, she
gave up the “playability”, then began to run counter to her former
theories in a series of papers, namely: Ways through the Labyrinth:
Strategies and Methods for Translating Theatre Texts; Translating for the
theatre---Textual complexities; Translating for the theatre: The Case
Against Performability. She once admitted that performability was
nothing but a human illusion, finally vanishing into thin air in reality. She
also considered other precious elements in the performance part,
compensating for the loss in the TT, for example, encoded gestic moves,
kinesic, paralinguistic signs, deictic units all play an indispensable role in
the performance of dramatic texts. So the dramatic SL can be displayed
vividly in fidelity by the use of these elements in the actors’ part.
Differences in register involving age, gender, social positions,
consistency in monologue should take priority over an abstract,
individualistic notion of performability. So all these encourage and force
her to abandon “playability” resolutely and determinedly.
To sum up, this book, just like a beam of sunshine, illuminates the
whole translation field; also like a glistening pearl, glitters incessantly to
eternity. Despite its tiny weakness, its brilliant lights will never be
overshadowed, so it continues to exert profound influence upon
generations after generations who read it.

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