转摘More and more scholars are now showing an interest in adopting linguistic approaches to translation Between 1949 and 1989， an incomplete survey by the author revealed that there were only about 30 textbook passages discussing the relationship between linguistics and translation， including aspects of general linguistics， pragmatics， stylistics， text linguistics， rhetoric and machine From 1990 to 1994， there was an incredible increase in the number of passages looking at translation from a linguistic point of Almost 160 articles published over these five years concerned translation and general linguistics， stylistics， comparative linguistics， semantics， pragmatics， sociolinguistics， text linguistics， rhetoric， New terms such as discourse analysis， hermeneutics， dynamic equivalence， deep structure and surface structure， context， theme and rheme， cooperative principles， to mention just a few， appeared in the field of translation We can definitely identify a trend of applying linguistics theories to translation studies in these Today， we are at the point of questioning whether linguistics is a necessary part of In recent years， some scholars who are in favour of free translation， have repeatedly raised this question to the public and appealed for an end to the linguistic approach to Some firmly believe that translation is an art and that therefore linguistics is neither useful nor Such a claim is wrong if we look at translation as a whole， including scientific translation where meanings are rigid and restricted and the degree of freedom is Flexibility， in this case， is neither required nor But even in literary translation， linguistics is hardly a Wang Zongyan pointed out that « If one sees linguistics as a body of rules regulating language， translators most probably will yawn with If it signifies the use of words and locutions to fit an occasion， there is nothing to stop translators from embracing linguistics » (Wang 1991: 38) The controversy over « literal » versus « free » translation has a long history， with convincing supporters on each For example， ancient Western scholars like Erasmus， Augustine， and others were in favour of literal Among early Chinese translators， Kumarajiva is considered to be of the free school， while Xuan Zuang appears as literal and In modern China， Yan Fu advocated hermeneutic translation， while Lu Xun preferred a clumsy version to one that was free but There is nothing wrong in any of these When these translators emphasized free translation they never denied the possibility of literal translation， and vice Problems only arise when the discussion turns to equivalent The problem of equivalence has caused much Some people believed that there could be an equivalence of language elements independent of the setting in which they of Based on this assumption， some « literal » translators tried to decompose a text into single elements in hopes of finding equivalents in the target This is a naive Jakobson (1971: 262) notes that « Equivalence in difference is the cardinal problem of language and the pivotal concern of » He does not refer to « equivalence » but to « equivalence in difference » as the cardinal Nida was also misunderstood by many for his notion of « equivalence， » which he took to mean that « Translating consists in reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source-language message， first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style » (1969: 12) He further concluded that « Absolute equivalence in translating is never possible » (1984: 14) De Beaugrande and Dressler believed that the success or failure of either free or literal approaches was uncertain: an unduly « literal » translation might be awkward or even unintelligible， while an unduly « free » one might make the original text disintegrate and disappear To them， equivalence between a translation and an original can only be realized in the experience of the participants ( de Beaugrande and Dressler 1981: 216-217) Catford (1965: 27) expressed the same concern that equivalent translation is only « an empirical phenomenon， discovered by comparing SL and TL » In citing the above examples， I have absolutely no intention of insisting on What I mean is that a translator should incorporate his or her own experience and processing activities into the text: solving the problems， reducing polyvalence， explaining away any discrepancies or Linguistic knowledge can help us treat different genres in different ways， always with an awareness that there are never exact equivalences but only Therefore， amplification and simplification become If we agree that texts can be translated， then， in what way does linguistics contribute to translation? To answer this question， we must look at the acceptance of western linguistics in China and its influence on Systematic and scientific study of the Chinese language came into being only at the end of the last century， when Ma Jianzhong published a grammar book Mashi Wentong «马氏文通» in 1898， which was the first in China and took the grammar of Indo-European languages as its The study of language was， in turn， influenced by translation studies in C In Mashi Wenton， the main emphasis is on the use of morphology， which takes up six-sevenths of the Influenced by the dominant trend of morphological studies， a word was regarded as the minimum meaningful unit， and a sentence was therefore the logical combination of words of various specific Translation was， then， principally based on the unit of the In the West， Biblical translation provided a very good example， just as the translation of Buddhist scriptures did in C Not until the end of the 19th century did some linguists come to realize that sentences were not just the summary of the sequenced words they The Prague School， founded in the 1920s， made a considerable contribution to the study of According to the analytic approach of the Functional Perspective of the Prague School， a sentence can be broken down into two parts: theme and Theme is opposed to rheme in a manner similar to the distinction between topic and comment， and is defined as the part of a sentence which contributes least to advancing the process of Rheme， on the other hand， is the part of a sentence which adds most to advancing the process of communication and has the highest degree of communicative These two terms help enlighten the process of translating Chinese into E In the mid-1950s， the study of syntax peaked with the Chomsky's establishment of transformational-generative This theory of the deep structure and surface structure of language influenced translation Nida relied heavily on this theory in developing his « analyzing-transfering-reconstructing » pattern for Some Chinese linguists， in the meantime， tried to raise language studies to a higher Li Jinxi (1982) enlarged the role of sentence studies in his book A New Chinese Grammar， two thirds of which was devoted to discussing sentence formation or He writes that « No words can be identified except in the context of a » The study was then improved by other grammarians， including Lu Shuxiang， Wang L With the development of linguistic studies， translation based on the unit of the sentence was put forward by some It was Lin Yu-Tang who first applied the theory to translation in his article « On T » He claimed that « translation should be done on the basis of the sentence [] What a translator should be faithful to is not the individual words but the meaning conveyed by them » (Lin 1984: r 3) The importance of context in the understanding of a sentence was therefore Chao Yuanren， a Chinese scholar and professor at Harvard University， criticized scholars and translators who tended to forget this point and take language for something independent and self- In fact， it is obvious that when we translate a sentence， we depend on its context; when we interpret an utterance we rely on the context of the speech ( Chao 1967) When a sentence is removed from the text， it usually becomes ambiguous due to the lack of Therefore， translation becomes In the 1960s， people began to realize that the study of language based on sentences was not even A complete study should be made of the whole A simple sentence like « George passed » may have different interpretations in different If the context is that of an examination， it means George did well on a test; in a card game it would indicate that George declined his chance to bid; in sports it would mean the ball reached another Without a context， how could we decide on a translation? Linguists therefore shifted their attention to the study of texts and to discourse Text linguistics have become increasingly popular since that Van Dijk was a pioneer in this field， and his four-volume edition of the Handbook of Discourse Analysis is of great Halliday's Cohesion in English and Introduction to Functional Grammar help us to better understand the English language on a textual It is worth noting that de Beaugrande and Dressler (1981) provided an overall and systematic study of text， which is useful to translation De Beaugrande actually wrote a book called Factors in a Theory of Poetic Translating in The book did not become very popular as it confined the discussion to translating At the same time， books on a linguistic approach to translation were introduced into China， such as the works of Eugene Nida， Peter Newmarks， JC Catford， Georges Mounin， and These books gave a great push to the application of linguistic theories to translation studies in C Textual or discoursive approaches to the study of translation could not keep pace with the development of text Some studies remained on the syntactic or semantic level， though even there textual devices were In talking about the translation units of word and text， Nida wrote: average person naively thinks that language is words， the common tacit assumption results that translation involves replacing a word in language A with a word in language B And the more « conscientious » this sort of translation is， the more In other words， the traditional focus of attention in translation was on the It was recognized that that was not a sufficiently large unit， and therefore the focus shifted to the But again， expert translators and linguists have been able to demonstrate that individual sentences， in turn， are not The focus should be on the paragraph， and to some extent on the total (Nida and Tabber 1969: 152) From that statement we can see that Nida regards a discourse as something larger than a paragraph， as an article with a beginning and an Nida himself never applied text linguistics to translation， and there might be some confusion if we use his term in our interpretation of discourse， because discourse analysis is not merely a study based on a larger language Some Chinese scholars did make the effort to apply text linguistics to the theory and practice of Wang Bingqin's article (1987) was the first academic paper of this He stated his aim to study and discover the rules governing the internal structure of a text in light of text He analyzed numerous examples using textual analysis， but unfortunately， all the samples he collected were descriptions of scenery or quotations from the books of great scholars--no dialogue， no illocutionary or perlocutionary forces in the He failed to provide a variety of For this reason， his research findings are largely restricted to rhetorical texts in ancient China ( Wang 1981; Luo 1994) Scholars like He Ziran applied pragamatics to He's article (1992) put forth two new terms， « pragmalinguistics » and « socio-pragmatics » which， in translation， refer respectively to « the study of pragmatic force or language use from the viewpoint of linguistic sources » and to « the pragmatic studies which examine the conditions on language use that derive from the social and cultural » He discusses the possibility of applying the pragmatic approach to translation in order to achieve a pragmatic equivalent effect between source and target texts; that is， to reproduce the message carried by the source language itself， as well as the meaning carried by the source language within its context and In this article he tries to distinguish « pragma-linguistics » from « socio-pragmatics » but finally admits that « Actually， a clear line between pragma-linguistics and socio-pragmatics may sometimes be difficult to » Still he insists that the application of the pragmatic approach to translation is helpful and even Ke Wenli (1992) argued that semantics， which in a broad sense combines semantics and pragmatics， should be studied to help understand， explain and solve some of the problems encountered in In this article， he examines four semantic terms--« sense and reference， » « hyponomy， » « changes of meaning » and « context »--giving many examples to illusrate the importance of having some general knowledge of semantics and of understanding the relationship between semantics and This article is clearly written and readers can easily draw inspiration from These linguistics approaches shed new lights on the criteria of « faithfulness， expressiveness and elegance » defined by Yan F Chinese scholars began to criticize the vagueness of these three criteria and endeavored to give them concrete significance through the theories of western The result is that the content of these three traditional criteria has been greatly enriched， especially by the effect equivalence theory， which in a broad sense means that the target language should be equivalent to the source language from a semantic， pragmatic， and stylistic point of But we are still unable to evaluate translations in a very scientific Therefore， Chinese scholars like Fan Shouyi， Xu Shenghuan and Mu Lei embarked on quantitative analyses of translations and used the fuzzy set theory of mathematics in accomplishing their Fan published several articles on this field of His 1987 and 1990 articles evaluate translations according to a numerical quantity of Xu's article « A Mathematical Model for Evaluating a Translation's Quality » presents a normal mathematical He states that it is difficult to produce an absolutely accurate evaluation of translations with this model because of the uncertainty and randomness of man's thought Making such analysis more accurate and objective would require further The unit in translation is a hard nut to Without solving this problem， no research in translation studies will ever be To date， very few people have focused their research on this Nida holds that the unit should be the sentence， and in a certain sense， the Barkhudarov (1993: 40)， Soviet linguist and translation theorist， suggests that: translation is the process of transforming a speech product (or text) produced in one language into a speech product (or text) in another [] It follows that the most important task of the translator who carries out the process of transformation， and of the theorist who describes or creates a model for that process， is to establish the minimal unit of translation， as it is generally called， the unit of translation in the source Though he notes the importance of the unit of translation in a text and considers that this unit can be a unit on any level of language， he fails to point out what a text is and how it might be measured in Halliday's notion of the clause might be significant in this To him， a clause is a basic He distinguishes three functions of a clause: textual， interpersonal and According to Halliday， these functions are not possessed by word or But he is not quite successful in analyzing the relationship between clause and text ( Halliday 1985) In China， some people have tried to solve this Wang Dechun (1987: 10) more or less shares Bakhudarov's view that the translation unit cannot be confined just to In some ways， the phoneme， word， phrase， sentence， paragraph， or even text can all serve as a At this point， we cannot find anything special in treating text translation except for having text as the highest level among translation This is not the aim of text linguistics or discourse If we want to apply these to the theory and practice of translation， we will require a textual
