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1、外文资料原文Translation EquivalenceDespite the fact that the world is becoming a global village, translation remains a major way for languages and cultures to interact and influence each other. And name translation, especially government name translation, occupies a quite significant place in internationa
2、l exchange.It is generally accepted that translation, not as a separate entity, blooms into flower under such circumstances like culture, societal functions, politics and power relations. Nowadays, the filed of translation studies is immersed with abundantly diversified translation standards, with n
3、o exception that some of them are presented by renowned figures and are rather authoritative. In the translation practice, however, how should we select the so-called translation standards to serve as our guidelines in the translation process and how should we adopt the translation standards to eval
4、uate a translation product? In the macro - context of flourish of linguistic theories, theorists in the translation circle, keep to the golden law of the principle of equivalence. The theory of Translation Equivalence is the central issue in western translation theories. And the presentation of this
5、 theory gives great impetus to the development and improvement of translation theory. Its not difficult for us to discover that it is the theory of Translation Equivalence that serves as guidelines in government name translation in China. Name translation, as defined, is the replacement of the name
6、in the source language by an equivalent name or other words in the target language. Translating Chinese government names into English, similarly, is replacing the Chinese government name with an equivalent in English.Metaphorically speaking, translation is often described as a moving trajectory goin
7、g from A to B along a path or a container to carry something across from A to B. This view is commonly held by both translation practitioners and theorists in the West. In this view, they do not expect that this trajectory or something will change its identity as it moves or as it is carried. In Chi
8、na, to translate is also understood by many people normally as“ to translate the whole text sentence by sentence and paragraph by paragraph, without any omission, addition, or other changes. In both views, the source text and the target text must be“the same”. This helps explain the etymological sou
9、rce for the term “translation equivalence”. It is in essence a word which describes the relationship between the ST and the TT.Equivalence means the state or fact or property of being equivalent. It is widely used in several scientific fields such as chemistry and mathematics. Therefore, it comes to
10、 have a strong scientific meaning that is rather absolute and concise. Influenced by this, translation equivalence also comes to have an absolute denotation though it was first applied in translation study as a general word. From a linguistic point of view, it can be divided into three sub-types, i.
11、e., formal equivalence, semantic equivalence, and pragmatic equivalence. In actual translation, it frequently happens that they can not be obtained at the same time, thus forming a kind of relative translation equivalence in terms of quality. In terms of quantity, sometimes the ST and TT are not equ
12、ivalent too. Absolute translation equivalence both in quality and quantity, even though obtainable, is limited to a few cases.The following is a brief discussion of translation equivalence study conducted by three influential western scholars, Eugene Nida, Andrew Chesterman and Peter Newmark.Its exp
13、ected that their studies can instruct GNT study in China and provide translators with insightful methods.Eugene NidaEugene A. Nidas definition of translation is : “Translation consists in reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source language message , first in te
14、rms of meaning and secondly in terms of style.” Its a replacement of textual material in one languageSLby equivalent textual material in another languageTL. The translator must strive for equivalence rather than identity. In a sense, this is just another way of emphasizing the reproducing of the mes
15、sage rather than the conservation of the form of the utterance. The message in the receptor language should match as closely as possible the different elements in the source language to reproduce as literally and meaningfully as possible the form and content of the original. Translation equivalence
16、is an empirical phenomenon discovered by comparing SL and TL texts and its a useful operational concept like the term “unit of translation”. Nida argues that there are two different types of equivalence, namely formal equivalence and dynamic equivalence. Formal correspondence focuses attention on th
17、e message itself, in both form and content, whereas dynamic equivalence is based upon “the principle of equivalent effect”.Formal correspondence consists of a TL item which represents the closest equivalent of a ST word or phrase. Nida and Taber make it clear that there are not always formal equival
18、ents between language pairs. Therefore, formal equivalents should be used wherever possible if the translation aims at achieving formal rather than dynamic equivalence. The use of formal equivalents might at times have serious implications in the TT since the translation will not be easily understoo
19、d by the target readership. According to Nida and Taber, formal correspondence distorts the grammatical and stylistic patterns of the receptor language, and hence distorts the message, so as to cause the receptor to misunderstand or to labor unduly hard.Dynamic equivalence is based on what Nida call
20、s “the principle of equivalent effect” where the relationship between receptor and message should be substantially the same as that which existed between the original receptors and the message. The message has to be modified to the receptors linguistic needs and cultural expectation and aims at comp
21、lete naturalness of expression. Naturalness is a key requirement for Nida. He defines the goal of dynamic equivalence as seeking the closest natural equivalent to the SL message. This receptor-oriented approach considers adaptations of grammar, of lexicon and of cultural references to be essential i
22、n order to achieve naturalness; the TL should not show interference from the SL, and theforeignnessof the ST setting is minimized. Nida is in favour of the application of dynamic equivalence, as a more effective translation procedure. Thus, the product of the translation process, that is the text in
23、 the TL, must have the same impact on the different readers it was addressing. Only in Nida and Tabers edition is it clearly stated that dynamic equivalence in translation is far more than mere correct communication of information.Andrew Chesterman As Andrew Chesterman points out in his recent book
24、Memes of Translation, equivalence is one of the five supermemes of translation theory, standing shoulder to shoulder with source-target, untranslatability, free-vs-literal, All-writing-is-translating in importance. Pragmatically speaking, observed Chesterman, “the only true examples of equivalence (
25、i.e., absolute equivalence) are those in which an ST item X is invariably translated into a given TL as Y, and vice versa. Typical examples would be words denoting numbers (with the exception of contexts in which they have culture-bound connotations, such as “magic” or “unlucky”), certain technical
26、terms (oxygen, molecule) and the like. From this point of view, the only true test of equivalence would be invariable back-translation. This, of course, is unlikely to occur except in the case of a small set of lexical items, or perhaps simple isolated syntactic structure”.Peter NewmarkDeparting fro
27、m Nidas receptor-oriented line, Newmark argues that the success of equivalent effect is“illusory”and that the conflict of loyalties and the gap between emphasis on source and target language will always remain as the overriding problem in translation theory and practice. He suggests narrowing the ga
28、p by replacing the old terms with those of semantic and communicative translation. The former attempts to render,as closely as the semantic and syntactic structures of the second language allow, the exact contextual meaning of the original, while the latter“attempts to produce on its readers an effe
29、ct as close as possible to that obtained on the readers of the original.” Newmarks description of communicative translation resembles Nidas dynamic equivalence in the effect it is trying to create on the TT reader, while semantic translation has similarities to Nidas formal equivalence.Meanwhile, Ne
30、wmark points out that only by combining both semantic and communicative translation, can we achieve the goal of keeping the spirit of the original. Semantic translation requires the translator retain the aesthetic value of the original, trying his best to keep the linguistic feature and characterist
31、ic style of the author. According to semantic translation, the translator should always retain the semantic and syntactic structures of the original. Deletion and abridgement lead to distortion of the authors intention and his writing style. 外文资料译文翻译对等尽管全世界渐渐成为一个地球村，翻译仍然是语言和文化之间交流互动，相互影响的主要方式之一。而名称的
32、翻译，尤其是政府机构名称的翻译，更是其中重要的一环。翻译，并不是一个单一的个体，它只有在文化，社会职能，政治和权力关系的情境下进行才能开枝散叶，这一点已普遍为人们所接受。而今，翻译研究领域充斥着大量五花八门的翻译标准，毫无例外，有些是由名人名家提出的，具有相当的权威性和影响力。然而在翻译实践中，应如何选择所谓的“翻译标准”为我们的翻译把关？又应采取何种翻译标准来评价一份翻译的好坏？在语言学理论蓬勃发展的大背景下，翻译学界的理论学家们坚守着“对等原则”的黄金定律。翻译对等论是西方翻译理论的核心学说。这个理论的出现给翻译理论的发展和进步注入了极大的动力。我们不难发现，在中国，正是翻译对等论在扮演着
33、英译政府机构名称时的指导准则。名称翻译的定义是用目的语的对等名或其他词语来替换源语的名称。相似地，中国政府机构名称的英译则是用英文中的对等名来替换政府机构的中文名称。打个比方，人们常常将翻译形容为一个移动的轨道。它沿着一条小径或穿过一个容器将某些信息由A处传达至B处。西方的翻译从业者和理论学家们普遍认同这一比喻。他们认为在信息移动或传递的过程中，这个轨道似的东西并不会改变信息本身的身份特征。许多中国人通常也将翻译理解为“逐句逐段地翻译整篇文章，不得省略，添加，或有任何改动。中西方的两种观点都认为源语文本和目的语文本必须完全相同。这恰恰说明了“翻译对等论”的词源。从本质上讲，这个词描述了源语文本
34、和目的语文本之间的关系。待添加的隐藏文字内容2对等是指两者相等的状态，事实或性质。这个词广泛应用于诸如化学，数学之类的科学领域。因此，它逐渐带上了浓厚的科学意味，绝对而准确。受其影响，翻译对等原则也逐渐拥有了绝对的指示意义，而一开始它是作为类别词被应用于翻译研究的。从语言学的角度可以将其分为三类，即，形式对等，语义对等和语用对等。在实际的翻译实践中经常发生这种情况，三类对等并不能同时实现，因此从翻译质量方面看对等只是相对的。从翻译数量方面看，源语文本和目的语文本有时也不是相等的。翻译质量和数量的绝对对等虽然可以实现，也仅仅局限于少数个例。下面我们将简单地探讨一下翻译对等论，品评三位颇具影响力的
35、西方翻译学者，尤金奈达，安德鲁切斯特曼和彼得纽马克关于翻译对等论的研究成果。希望他们的理论能够为中国政府机构名称翻译的研究指引方向，为广大译者启迪思想，给予借鉴。尤金奈达尤金奈达对翻译的定义是：“翻译是指接受语复制源语的信息的最近似的自然等值，首先在意义方面，其次在文体方面.”这是一种语言（源语）的文本材料被另一种语言（目的语）对等的文本材料替换的过程。译者必须努力求得等值而不是同一，从某种意义上讲，这是强调复制信息而不是保留话语的形式。目的语信息应与源语的不同成分尽可能吻合，以复制原文的形式和内容。翻译等值是在比较源语和目的语时发现的一种经验性的现象，如同翻译单位一样，是有用的，指导操作的概
36、念。奈达认为对等有两类，即形式对等和动态对等。形式对等关注信息本身，不仅关注其形式，也关注其内容。动态对等则建立在“对等效果原则”的基础之上。形式对等指的是在目的语中找到代表源语文本中词或词组的最近似的对等词。奈达和泰伯明确表示，语言对中并不是总存在形式对等词。因此，如果翻译的目的在于达到形式对等而非动态对等时，则尽可能使用形式对等词。然而，由于目的语读者要理解译作并不简单，源语在目的语中的形式对等词有时会带有强烈的隐含意义。根据奈达和泰伯的理论，形式对等会扭曲译入语的语法和文体形式，因此扭曲了原文要传达的信息，导致目的语读者误解或难以理解。动态对等是建立在被奈达称作“对等效果原则”的基础上的
37、。这种原则认为目标文本的接受者和信息之间的关系应当同源语文本的接受者和信息之间的关系大体相同。译者必须根据目的语读者的语言需求和文化期望修改信息，使译文表达完全自然。奈达对译作的关键要求就是自然。他将动态对等的目标定义为寻求源语信息最近似的自然对等语。这种以目标文本的接受者为导向的方法认为为了使译文清新自然，对语法，词汇和文化所指进行适度调整相当重要。目的语不应受到源语干扰，且源语环境与目的语环境的差异性应被降低到最小。奈达更倾向于应用动态对等论，他认为这种翻译法更为有效。因此，翻译过程的产品，即目的语文本，必须在译入语读者中产生相同的影响。翻译中的动态对等不仅仅局限于正确无误地交流信息，这一
38、点只有奈达和泰伯的书才有明确阐述。安德鲁切斯特曼安德鲁切斯特曼在他最新出版的图书翻译模因论中指出，对等是翻译理论的五个超模因之一，与其他四大超模因同等重要，即源语目的语关系，不可译性，异议与直译以及“所有写作都是翻译”的论述。切斯特曼从语用学的角度分析后得出：真正的对等，即绝对对等，只有“源语文本中的X在任何情况下都被译为特定目的语文本中的Y，反之亦然”这种情形。典型的例子有数词（这种情况也有例外，在某些情境下，它们有特定的文化内涵，例如表示“魔力”或“霉运”）和一些专业性词汇，如氧气，分子等。如此看来，真正能够检验对等的唯一方法就是“反译”，即翻译目的语中的对等词，看其是否与原文本吻合。当然
39、，除了少数词语和简单孤立的句法结构，绝对对等是不太可能实现的。彼得纽马克与奈达的以接受者为导向的翻译方法不同，纽马克认为取得对等效果的希望是虚无的,忠实于不同对象而产生的冲突，强调源语或目的语之间的分歧一直是翻译理论与实践中的首要难题。他建议使用语义翻译和交际翻译的方法替换过去的做法以缩小分歧。语义翻译试图在译入语语义和句法结构允许的范围内，尽可能准确地传达原文的上下文意义。而交际翻译试图使译作对译文读者产生的效果尽量等同于原作对原文读者产生的效果。纽马克对交际翻译的描述与奈达的动态对等理论类似，因为它也试图使译作在译文读者身上产生相似的效果，而语义翻译与奈达的形式对等有相似之处。同时，纽马克指出，只有结合应用语义和交际翻译才能实现保持原文精髓的目标。语义翻译要求译者保留原文的审美价值，尽力维持作者的语言特征和独特风格。根据语义翻译论，译者应该保留原文的语义和句法结构。信息的删除和缩略都会导致对作者创作意图和写作风格的扭曲。
