英语翻译方法大总结

Newmark and his translation theory

Newmark departs from Nida‟s receptor-oriented line, feeling that the success of equivalent effect is „illusory‟ and that „the conflict of loyalties, the gap between emphasis on source and target language will always remain as the overriding problem in translation theory and practice (Newmark 1981: 38). He suggests narrowing the gap by replacing the old terms with those of „semantic‟ and „communicative‟ translation.



1. intralingual translation: an interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs of the same language; 2. interlanguage translation: an interpretation of verbal signs by means of some other language; 3. intersemiotic translation: an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of non-verbal sign systems.

John Dryden (1631-1700)

In the preface to his translation of Ovid‟s Epistles in 1680, John Dryden (1631-1700) reduces all translation to three categories: 1. “metaphrase”: “word by word and line by line” translation 2. “paraphrase”: translation with latitude, where the author is kept in view by the translator, so as never to be lost, but his words are not so strictly followed as his sense; this involves changing whole phrases and more or less corresponds to faithful or sense-forsense translation; 3. “imitation”: forsaking both words and sense; this corresponds to Cowley‟s very free translation and is more or less adaptation.
Translation General Revision
30th April 2011
Cicero (first century BC)


Cicero (first century BC) outlines his approach to translation as follows: And I did not translate them as an interpreter, keeping the same ideas and forms, or as one might say, the “figure” of thought, but as an orator, in language which conforms to our usage. And in so doing, I did not hold it necessary to render word for word, but I preserved the general style and force of the language.


Friedrich Schleiermacher


In 1813, the German theologian and translator Friedrich Schleiermacher wrote a highly influential treatise on translation “On the difference of methods of translating”. He was the first theorist to distinguish two different types of translator according to the task they face: 1. the translator of commercial texts; 2. the translator of scholarly and artistic texts. It is the second type that Schleiermacher sees as being on a higher creative plane, breathing new life into the language (1813:38)

Nida is famous for his theory of „two types of equivalence‟. The first one, the „formal equivalence‟ runs as follows:
Formal equivalence focuses attention on the message itself, in both form and concept… One is concerned that the message in the receptor language should match as closely as possible the different elements in the source language. (Nida 1964: 159)






2. Frequent use of passive voice 3. Frequent use of non-finite verbs 4) Frequent use of post-modifiers 5) Frequent use of lengthy sentences 6) Frequent use of compounds and abbreviations 7) Frequent use of technical terms
Jakobson’s translation theory

In his paper “On linguistic aspects of translation” (1959), the Russian-born American Roman Jakobson describes three kinds of translation as follows:



Schleiermacher‟s preferred strategy is the first type, moving the reader toward the writer. To achieve this, the translator must adopt an “alienating” (as opposed to “naturalizing”) method of translation, orienting himself or herself by the language and content of the ST. ( adapted from Munday 2001:28)
St. Jerome

St. Jerome, the most famous of all translators in the west in the 4th century, defending himself against criticism of “incorrect” translation, describes his strategy in the following terms: Now I not only admit but announce that in translating from the Greek -- except of course in the case of the Holy Scripture, where the syntax contains a mystery – I render not word for word, but sense to sense.

源自文库
The second one, „dynamic equivalence‟ is based on Nida‟s „principle of equivalent effect‟, where „the relationship between receptor and message should be substantially the same as that which existed between the original receptor and the message‟ (Nida 1964:159) The message has to be tailored to the receptor‟s linguistic needs and cultural expectation and „aims at complete naturalness of expression‟.
Major characteristics of Scientific English (EST)

1. Frequent use of nominalization
Archimedes first discovered the principle of displacement of water by solid bodies. The rotation of the earth on its won axis causes the change from day to night.
Nida and ‘the science of translating’

Eugene Nida‟s theory of translation developed from his own practical work from the 1940s onwards when he was translating and organizing the translation of the Bible. His theory took concrete form in two major works in the 1960s: Toward a Science of Translating (1964) and the co-authored The Theory and Practice of Translation (Nida and Taber 1969).
“Either the translator leaves the writer alone as much as possible and moves the reader toward the writer, or he leaves the reader alone as much as possible and moves the writer toward the reader.”

Schleiermacher moves beyond the issues of word-forword and sense-for-sense, literal, faithful and free translation, and considers there to be only two paths open for the “true” translator: