Chapter one
An overview of Western Translation Studies before the 1970s 1. Translation in Antiquity
The first traces of translation date from 3000 BC, during the Egyptian Old Kingdom, in the area of the First Cataract（大瀑布）, Elephantine, where inscriptions in two languages have been found. It became a significant factor in the West in 300 BC, when the Romans took over wholesale many element of Greek culture, including the whole religious apparatus. (Newmark, 1982/2001:3)
Cicero is often considered the founder of Western translation theory, and the first to comment on the process of translation and offer advice on how best to undertake the task.
In his
On
the
Orator(Deoratore,55BC)，Cicero set the terms which were expanded by Horace, Pliny the Younger, Quintillian, Saint Jerome, and Catholics, Reformers and Humanists from the 14th to the 17th centuries. Cicero?s approach to translation is “sense-for-sense” and not “word-for word”. That means a translator should bear in mind the intended meaning of the SL author and render it by means of TL words or word-order which does not sound strange to the TL readers. For Cicero, “if I render word for word, the result will sound uncouth, and if compelled by necessity I alter anything in the order or wording, I shall seem to have departed from the function of a translator.” (Bassnett-McGuire, 1980:43)
Pliny the Younger practiced and propagated translating as a literary technique. For him, the most useful thing is to translate Greek into Latin and Latin into Greek. This kind of exercise develops in a precision and richness of vocabulary, a wide range metaphor and power of exposition, and imitation of the best models leads to a like aptitude for original composition. Though Pliny emphasizes the importance of translation, he unlike Cicero, prefers “word for word” translation to “sense for sense” one.
Horace argues for the revitalization of well-known texts through a style that would “neither linger in the one hackneyed and easy round; neither trouble to render word by word with the faithfulness of a translator”, not treat the original writer?s beliefs with too easy a trust, and would avoid stylistic over-sensationalism “so that the middle never strikes a different note from the beginning, nor the end from the middle.”(Robinson, 1997:15) His criticism of the faithful translator is often turned on its head to support translational fidelity to the original.
Saint Jerome, a Christian ascetic and Biblical scholar, translated the New Testament from Hebrew into the popular, non-literary Latin. His Letter to Pammachius (395AD) on the best kind of translator is the founding document of Christian translation theory. St Jerome points out that “in translating from the Greek, --I render not word for word, but sense for sense.” (Robinson, 1997:25) He criticizes the word-for-word
approach because, by following so closely the form of the ST, it produces and ‘absurd’translation, concealing the sense of the original. The sense-for-sense approach, on the other hand, allows the sense or content of the SL to be translated. In these poles can be seen the origin of both the ?literal vs free? and ?form vs content? debate that has continued until modern times. (Mnday, 2001：20) 2. Translation in Renaissance and Reformation
At the time of the Renaissance, there was a flood of translations largely from Greek. The spirit of Renaissance inspired and gave rise to numerous translations of scientific and religious texts in England and elsewhere (Nida, 1964:14). A major force behind these translations was aristocratic interest and patronage. These translations into vernaculars legitimized vernacular writings because they promised access to Latin culture. However, the translations from Latin to vernaculars reproduced the systems of containment and control that sustain the Latin academic tradition.(Copeland, 1991: 224-8)
The 16th century witnessed an ideological movement known as “Protestantism”. Though this movement spread itself throughout Europe, its overwhelming presence was felt in Germany. In the field of religion, church authorities forbade the lay people to read the Bible in their native languages.
Martin Luther, the dominant figure in the field of translation and “father of the modern German language”, translated the Bible into High German and used an ideological weapon of the Protestant movement against the Roman church. Luther?s Bible translations reveal to us how translation is used by conflicting social classes as an ideological weapon. In 1530, Luther wrote the self-promoting and nationalistic Sendbrief vom Dolmestschen(Circular Letter on Translation), in which he criticized Latin, Hebrew and other languages for being full of “stone and stumps”, in contrast to his smooth German writing. As a poet, writer and translator, Luther reformed the German language in ways that can still be felt today. He carefully and systematically worded out his seven principles of meaning-oriented translation: 1) shift of word-order;
2) employment of model auxiliaries;
3) introduction of conatives, whenever required;(可以增补必要的连词) 4) use of phrases, where necessary to translate single words in the original text;
5) shifts of metaphors to non-metaphors and vice versa;
6) careful attention paid to explanatory accuracy and textual variants.(Nida, 1964: 15)
In his 1540 manuscript The way of translating well from one language into another, Etienne Dolet postulates 5 principles of good
translation: 1)
the translator must understand perfectly the content and intention of the author whom he is translating;
2)
the translator should have a perfect knowledge of the language from which he is translating and an equally excellent knowledge of the language into which his is translating;
3)
the translator should avoid the tendency to translate word to word, for to do so is to destroy the meaning of the original and to ruin the beauty of the expression;
4)
the translator should employ the forms of speech in common usage;
5)
through his choice and order of words, the translator should be able to produce the total overall effect with an ?appropriate tone?.
Abraham Cowley advocates freedom in translation and treats word-for-word translation as one mad man translating another. His defense of free imitation provides Dryden with his primary foil.
John Dryden is often seen as the first systematic translation theorist in the West. Like his contemporaries, he is engaged in the gentlemanly search for secular principles of translation. For him, ‘gentlemanly’largely means ‘amateurish’, means refusing to put