翻译研究的名与实原文

多年以来，人们对翻译的方方面面进行了不懈的探讨，但对翻译研究作为一门学科的研究对象、研究范围以及研究方法却不甚明了，或莫衷一是。欢迎阅读翻译研究的名与实原文，了解清楚。霍姆斯的这篇文章一直被翻译研究界视为具有划时代的重要意义。

1.1

“SCIENCE,” MICHAEL MULKAY points out, “tends to proceed by means of discovery of new areas of ignorance.” 2 The process by which this takes place has been fairly well defined by the sociologists of science and research.3 As a new problem or set of problems comes into view in the world of learning, there is an influx of researchers from adjacent areas, bringing with them the paradigms and models that have proved fruitful in their own fields. These paradigms and models are then brought to bear on the new problem, with one of two results. In some situations the problem proves amenable to explicitation, analysis, explication, and at least partial solution within the bounds of one of the paradigms or models, and in that case it is annexed as a legitimate branch of an established field of study. In other situations the paradigms or models fail to produce sufficient results, and researchers become aware that new methods are needed to approach the problem.

In the second type of situation, the result is a tension between researchers investigating the new problem and colleagues in their former fields, and this tension can gradually lead to the establishment of new channels of communication and the development of what has been called a new disciplinary utopia, that is, a new sense of a shared interest in a common set of problems, approaches, and objectives on the part of a new grouping of researchers. As W. O. Hagstrom has indicated, these two steps, the establishment of communication channels and the development of a disciplinary utopia, “make it possible for scientists to identify with the emerging discipline and to claim legitimacy for their point of view when appealing to university bodies or groups in the larger society.”

1.2

Though there are no doubt a few scholars who would object, particularly among the linguists, it would seem to me clear that in regard to the complex of problems clustered round the phenomenon of translating and translations,5 the second situation now applies. After centuries of incidental and desultory attention from a scattering of authors, philologians, and literary scholars, plus here and there a theologian or an idiosyncratic linguist, the subject of translation has enjoyed a marked and constant increase in interest on the part of scholars in recent years, with the Second World War as a kind of turning point. As this interest has solidified and expanded, more and more scholars have moved into the field, particularly from the adjacent fields of linguistics, linguistic philosophy, and literary studies, but also from such seemingly more remote disciplines as information theory, logic, and mathematics, each of them carrying with him paradigms, quasi-paradigms, models, and methodologies that he felt could be brought to bear on this new first glance, the resulting situation today would appear to be one of great confusion, with no consensus regarding the types of models to be tested, the kinds of methods to be applied, the varieties of terminology to be used. More than that,there is not even likemindedness about the contours of the field, the problem set, the discipline as such. Indeed, scholars are not so much as agreed on the very name for the new field.

Nevertheless, beneath the superficial level, there are a number of indications that for the field of research focusing on the problems of translating and translations Hagstrom’s disciplinary utopia is taking shape. If this is a salutary development (and I believe that it is), it follows that it is worth our while to further the development by consciously turning our attention to matters that are serving to impede it.

1.3

One of these impediments is the lack of appropriate channels of communication. For scholars and researchers in the field, the channels that do exist still tend to run via the older disciplines (with their attendant norms in regard to models, methods, and terminology), so that papers on the subject of translation are dispersed over periodicals in a wide variety of scholarly fields and journals for practising translators. It is clear that there is a need for other communication channels, cutting across the traditional disciplines to reach all scholars working in the field, from whatever background.

2.1

But I should like to focus our attention on two other impediments to the development of a disciplinary Utopia. The first of these, the lesser of the two in importance, is the seemingly trivial matter of the name for this field of research. It would not be wise to continue referring to the discipline by its subject matter as has been done at this conference, for the map, as the General Semanticists constantly remind us, is not the territory, and failure to distinguish the two can only further confusion.

Through the years, diverse terms have been used in writings dealing with translating and translations, and one can find references in English to “the art” or “the craft” of translation, but also to the “principles” of translation, the “fundamentals” or the “philosophy”. Similar terms recur in French and German. In some cases the choice of term reflects the attitude, point of approach, or background of the writer; in others it has been determined by the fashion of the moment in scholarly terminology.

2.2

There have been a few attempts to create more “learned” terms, most of them with the highly active disciplinary suffix -ology. Roger Goffin, for instance, has suggested the designation “translatology” in English, and either its cognate or traductologie in French.6 But since the -ology suffix derives from Greek, purists reject a contamination of this kind, all the more so when the other element is not even from Classical Latin, but from Late Latin in the case of translatio or Renaissance French in that of traduction. Yet Greek alone offers no way out, for “metaphorology”, “metaphraseology”, or “metaphrastics” would hardly be of aid to us in making our subject clear even to university bodies, let alone to other “groups in the larger society.”7 Such other terms as “translatistics” or “translistics”, both of which have been suggested, would be more readily understood, but hardly more acceptable.

2.2.1

Two further, less classically constructed terms have come to the fore in recent years. One of these began its life in a longer form, “the theory of translating” or “the theory of translation” (and its corresponding forms: “Theorie des übersetzens”, “théorie de la traduction”). In English (and in German) it has since gone the way of many such terms, and is now usually compressed into “translation theory” (übersetzungstheorie). It has been a productive designation, and can be even more so in future, but only if it is restricted to its proper meaning. For, as I hope to make clear in the course of this paper, there is much valuable study and research being done in the discipline, and a need for much more to be done, that does not, strictly speaking, fall within the scope of theory formation.

2.2.2

The second term is one that has, to all intents and purposes, won the field in German as a designation for the entire discipline. 8 This is the term übersetzungswissenschaft, constructed to form a parallel to Sprachwissenschaft, Literaturwissenschaft, and many other Wissenschaften. In French, the comparable designation, “science de la traduction”, has also gained ground, as have parallel terms in various other languages.

One of the first to use a parallel-sounding term in English was Eugene Nida, who in 1964 chose to entitle his theoretical handbook Towards a Science of Translating.9 It should be noted, though, that Nida did not intend the phrase as a name for the entire field of study, but only for one aspect of the process of translating as such.