Lecture7

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―The shift in terminology from translating to comprehending reveals the extent to which for Richards the task of the translator and the task of the interpreter are identical.‖[1] He emphasizes at the outset that his theory of comprehending developed directly from the concluding chapter in his book Mencius on the Mind, ―Towards a Technique of Comparative Studies.‖ In this essay, Richards introduced for the first time his modified diagram for the process of communication, adapted from the The Mathematical Theory of Communication by Claude E.Shannon and Warren Weaver(Urbana, University of Illinois Press,1940). [1] Cyrus Hamlin, ―Translation as Cultural Mediation in the Works of I.A.Richards‖ in Chinese Translators’ Journal 2002, Vol.23,No.1, p. 17.
6. Communication Theory in Translation
Communication Theory in Translation
• • 2.1. From Coding to Matrix Coding One of the developments of translation theory stems from communication theory, which sees the work to be translated as a fixed entity that can be accurately represented by an arbitrary label--usually a box with the word ―source‖ inside. The contents of this box are depicted as being transmitted into another entity represented by the translation—another box marked by the word ―target‖. This visual scheme can then be modified in successively more complex models that will include such elements as ―fields‖ marked ―static‖ or ―noise‖; intermediary factors can be inserted between source and destination with such terms as ―encoder‖, usually placed to the right of ―source‖ and ―decoder‖ placed usually near to the left of ―target‖. In the process of translating, the translator takes a message(M), decodes that message, and discovers the references (R) in the first language(A):
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Matrix Code来自translationTarget Code
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A second difficulty is more basic. These diagrams assume that all messages (M) are unequivocal and unilateral—that messages are schematizable entities. Most would suggest that messages, even the simplest sort, are not without ambiguities.[1] If this is so with simple message, how much more so with discourse— including literature—which is suggestive, multivalent, creatively ambiguous, historically contingent, for both author and reader. Consider very simple, how many people would agree on the ―message‖ of any significant work of literature; consider further, how the greatest works of literature positively invite, indeed thrive on, the impossibility of any number of readers—of the same or different generations, with the same or different backgrounds—agreeing on the central message in the work. [1] One thinks of the child’s game of ―telephone‖, where a ―message,‖ given to one person who whispers it in turn to another, and that person to another, through a sequence involving several receiver/transmitter stages, ends up in a radically different form with a totally different meaning from its ―original‖
• this process undergoes a ―transfer mechanism‖ that involves A-B, which produces signs (S) in language B that can then be encoded into message(M) in the second language (B). these depictions provide a helpful clarification of various stages in a difficulty process, and diagrammatically the analysis is attractive. Here is Nida’s scheme (1964:146):
• Decode—R(A)---Transfer Mechanism • ---S(B)--Encoding
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The advantage of such a schema is that it indicates (in implicitly left-right orientation) the sequence of the stages involved. But there are at least two problems with such a model. The left-to right orientation suggests strongly, if implicitly, a ―one-way arrow‖—when in fact the process of translation may involve more of a dialectic process, in which an unsatisfactory message in the target language may cause not a ―loop‖ (where one starts again at the message in the source language) but a dynamic back-and-forth process in both directions (from right-to left and left-to –right in the diagram) that will yield possible alternatives providing better ―matches‖ for the message in the source language. Indeed, in his diagram, Frawley explicitly attaches arrows in both directions to indicate more accurately the dynamics of translation (1984:163)
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2.2. Ian Richards:Translation As Communication) Ian A.Richards (1893-1979), one of the founders and practitioners of the New Criticism in the theory and practice of translation. Beginning with his book Mencius on the Mind (1932), which resulted from his initial stay in China as a visiting professor at Tsinghua University, Richards approached the problem of translation in conjunction with his theory of multiple definitions and the plurality of meaning in language. The most ambitious and important essay on translation written by Richards initially had the title of ―Towards a Theory of Translating‖ published in Studies in Chinese Thought, edited by Arthur F.Wright (Chicago,1953). The title of this essay was changed to ― Toward a Theory of Comprehending‖ when Richards reprinted in his own collection of essays which was entitled Speculative Instruments (1955).