翻译理论书评(程思茜G13201039)(可编辑修改word版)

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 TranslationStudies(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 ofequivalence, 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 centur ies” 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 atrecognizing 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 m y 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 thespecific, 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.。