翻译理论

Roman Jakobson developed an approach focused on the way in which language's structure served its basic function (synchronic approach) – to communicate information between speakers.

On Linguistic Aspects of Translation is an essay written

by Russian linguist Roman Jakobson in 1959.[1]

Jakobson has been closely associated not only with formalism but also linguistics, anthropology and psychoanalysis. He is known as being the founder of the Prague Linguistic Circle. He is also known to have coined the term Structural Linguistics.

In his essay, Jakobson states that meaning of a word is a linguistic phenomena. Using semiotics, Jakobson believes that meaning lies with the signifier and not in the signified. Thus it is the linguistic verbal sign that gives an object its meaning. Interpretation of a verbal sign according to Roman Jakobson can happen in three ways: intralingual, interlingual and intersemiotic. In the case of intralingual translation, the changes take place within the same language. Thus a verbal sign (word) belonging to a particular language is replaced by another sign (word) belonging to the same language. Interlingual translation on the other hand can be seen as replacing a verbal sign with another sign but belonging to a different language.

The last kind of explanation of verbal sign that he talks about is the intersemiotic translation. Here more than focusing on the words, emphasis is on the overall message that needs to be conveyed. Thus the translator, instead of paying attention to the verbal signs, concentrates more on the information that is to be delivered. Roman Jakobson uses the term ‘mutual translatability’ and states that when any two languages are being compared, the foremost thing that needs to be taken into consideration is whether they can be translated into one another or not. Laying emphasis on the grammar of a particular language, he feels that it should determine how one language is different from another.

In the essay, Roman Jakobson also deals with the problem of ‘deficiency’ in a particular language. Jakobson believes that all cognitive experiences can be expressed in language and while translating whenever there is a lack or ‘deficiency’ of words’, ‘loan words’, ‘neologisms’ and

‘circumlocutions’ can be used to fill in this lack.

Reinforcing the fact that one of the factors that translation has to take care of is the grammatical structure of the target language, Jakobson believes that it becomes tedious to try and maintain fidelity to the source text when the target language has a rigid grammatical framework which is missing in the source language. Jakobson, in his essay also brings in the relationship between gender and the grammar of a particular language. J.R.Firth His work on prosody, which he emphasised at the expense of the phonemic principle, prefigured later work in autosegmental phonology. Firth is noted for drawing attention to the context-dependent nature of meaning with his notion of 'context of situation'. In particular, he is known for the famous quotation:You shall know a word by the company it keeps (Firth, J. R. 1957:11)

一、布拉格学派

该学派的创始人为马希修斯（Vilem Mathesius）、特鲁贝斯科伊

（Nikolay S. Trubetskoy）和雅可布森（Roman Jakobson）。主要成员有雅可布森、列维、维内等重要的翻译理论家。

这一学派的主要论点为：（１）翻译必须考虑语言的各种功能，包括认识功能、表达功能和工具功能等；（２）翻译必须重视语言的比较，包括语义、语法、语音、语言风格以及文学体裁的比较。

布拉格学派最有影响的翻译理论家是罗曼·雅可布森。他原籍俄国，后移居捷克；二战时迁至美国，加入美籍。作为学派的创始人之一，他对翻译理论的贡献主要体现在《论翻译的语言学问题》（On Linguistic Aspects ofTranslation）之中。文章从语言学的角度，对翻译的重要性、语言和翻译的关系以及存在的问题给出精辟的论述。自１９５９年发表后，此文一直被西方理论界奉为翻译研究的经典之一。

雅可布森的论述主要有五点：（１）翻译分为三类：语内翻译

（intralingual translation）、语际翻译（interlingual translation）和符际翻译（intersemiotic translation）。所谓语内翻译，是指在同一语言内用一些语言符号去解释另一些语言符号，即通常的“改变说法”(rewording)。所谓语际翻译，是指在两种语言之间即用一种语言的符号去解释另一种语言的符号，即严格意义上的翻译。所谓符际翻译，是指用非语言符号系统解释语言符号，或用语言符号解释非语言符号，比如把旗语或手势变成言语表达。（２）对于词义的理解取决于翻译。他认为，在语言学习和语言理解过程中，翻译起着决定性作用。（３）准确的翻译取决于信息对称。翻译所涉及的是两种不同语符中的对等信息。（４）所有语言都具有同等表达能力。如果语言中出现词汇不足，可通过借词、造词或释义等方法对语言进行处理。（５）语法范畴是翻译中最复杂的问题。这对于存在时态、性、数等语法形式变化的语言，尤其复杂。

二、伦敦学派