Abstract: This paper traces the origin, growth and development of descriptive translation studies, one of the most influential schools of thought in translation studies in the West today. Following a brief description of its major characteristics, the paper dwells on the school’s relevance to the Chinese translators. The point is made that the descriptive theory can explain the orientation of all kinds of translations, broaden the scope of the field of study and enrich the practice of translation in China.
Key words: prescriptive; descriptive; translation studies
Translation studies, from the beginning, summarize the inductive experience, such as Yan Fu's faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance, that is, use his own experience from translation practice to condense it into a "standard" of warning sentences, and pass it on to future generations, so that others can follow suit; Later, deductive scientific research, such as Nida's dynamic equivalence, used some basic principles of linguistics. The translation process is described strictly (rigorous), the ultimate product of translation is identified strictly, and the whole process of translation is specified in detail with four semantic units, seven core sentences, and five reverse transformation steps to guide translation practice. This kind of translation research method is prescriptive. The distinctive feature of normative translation studies is that a norm should be set so that all translators, regardless of the time, the object of work, and the cognitive environment of translators and readers, can follow it in their translation practice. In case of violation, it will be scolded as "unfaithful" or "heavy structure", "misleading", etc. Maria Tymoczko, a well-known American descriptive translation scholar, believes that the root of normative translation theory lies in the fact that translation is regarded as a pure language art, which is examined by some language rules that transcend time. (As a language art, translation has often been considered from the point of view of timeless linguistic rules (which has led to a normal tension in the theory).
Normative translation theory, whether in China or overseas, has always been an unshakable guideline in the translation field, which lasted until the 1950s. No one has questioned it for a long time. People seem to think that the role of theory is to regulate behavior and unify thought, which is a matter of course. Without those normative standards, the translation world would not be in chaos.
However, it is an indisputable fact that the translation industry has long been "chaotic". Apart from the debate over literal translation and free translation, which is intermittent and continuous, and whether Lin Shu's translation is a translation or a "translation", and whether Pound's translation of Chinese poetry is a translation, it is also controversial to take "faithfulness" as the core issue of translation. Xia Jian translated Hawthorne's "Memoirs of the Ancient House", deliberately turning "cow" into "crow" to set off the bleak atmosphere. Some people said that the translator and the original role "reached a spiritual fit". ② Some people scoffed and thought that the translation had not even achieved the minimum "faithfulness". ③ Taking the translation of Ulster cycle, an ancient Irish hero epic, as an example, it was even more puzzling. The ancient Irish language has long been lost, and the "original" has almost no one can understand. "Faithfulness" is impossible to speak of. In addition, translators of later generations have added more details or cut their feet to fit their shoes for the needs of the national liberation struggle. Or add or delete can be said to make the "original" look completely different. However, these translations did play an important role in the Irish national liberation struggle. ④ Say it is a translation. Not even the original text can be found; If not translation, it is a little different from pure creation. In the face of these rare examples of translation, normative translation theory seems powerless.
The practice of translation calls for new theories, and descriptive translation theory comes into being. The so-called descriptive translation theory, in the words of Maria Tymoczko, That is: "Descriptive translation studies, when studying the process, product and function of translation, put translation in the era to study. In a broad sense, it is to study translation in politics, ideology, economy and culture." (Descriptive translation studies when they tend to process, product, and function set translation practices in time and, thus by extension, in politics, ideology, economics, culture.). As Gideon Tour, the representative of the descriptive school, pointed out: What is translation? "Translation is the language version of any segment of the target text in the target system, which is translated or considered to be translated, regardless of the reason." （a translation will be any target language text which is presented or regarded as such in a target system, on whatever grounds.）⑥
Descriptive translation theory does not care about literal translation and free translation at all. Instead, they care about contextualizing translation, that is, studying translation from a macro perspective. What factors prompted the translator to choose this work for translation into another language? What role does the translation play in the target culture? These are the two most common questions that descriptive scholars often ask themselves. Take a recent example. The Irish writer Joyce's Ulysses has produced two Chinese versions. Our critics, from the perspective of norms, analyze which is literal translation, which is free translation, which is good and which is bad. However, the descriptive translation school said that it was a good thing to have two translations, which fully reflected that China was really open. ⑦ We do not mean that normative translation studies are not good, but that normative translation studies are not comprehensive enough. There should be another angle in translation studies, that is, the macro perspective. The two are not contradictory, they should be combined, so that translation studies can reveal the whole of translation. It is reasonable for Professor Maria Tymoczko to compare macro research and micro research to telescope and microscope research respectively.
The descriptive translation school originated in the 1950s. 1953 John Ma
CFarlane) published his paper "The Mode of Translation" in the Journal of Durham University. MacFarlane pointed out in his paper, "Denying the role of translation and depriving some translation methods of what they call the right of translation, just because the translation has not achieved equivalence in all aspects at the same time, this is a kind of indiscriminate criticism, simple and easy, but it can be seen everywhere." ⑧ MacFarlane points out that there are often different ways to read the same work at the same time, citing the words of I. A. Richards in the important British and American new criticism work "Principles of Literary Criticism". It can be inferred that "we can never assume that there is only one translation; since (the original) has different meanings, it is inevitable to produce different translations from it. These translations may all be translations, but none of them is an 'ideal' or 'real' translation". MacFarlane further pointed out that since the meaning is so complex and unpredictable, it is impossible to derive the absolute standard of accurate translation from it. He argued that "we need a different method of studying translation. This method accepts the existing translation and ignores our ideal translation. This method gets inspiration from studying the nature of translation, rather than letting translation do what it can't do." ⑨ Unfortunately, MacFarlane's words did not attract the attention of the translation circle at that time.
It was not until the 1960s that MacFarlane's views finally received a response. They were James Holmes, an American translator and translation theorist working in Amsterdam at that time, and a group of Czechoslovak scholars, including Jiri Levy, Anton Popovic and Frantisek Miko. They are interested in the following topics: structuralist literary theory, the position of translation in academic history, the method of describing the difference between translation and the original text from the perspective of style and subject matter, and the distinctive features of translation compared with other metatext. However, due to the premature death of Levy (1967) and Popovich (1984), the Czech School soon disappeared. However, these scholars had contact with Itamar Even Zohar, an Israeli scholar who later became the main force of the school of description, and Jose Lambert, a Flemish scholar at the University of Leuven, Raymond van den Broeck and Andre Lefevere, who were working in a translation institute in Antwerp at that time. Their views have more or less influenced these rising scholars.
The formation of the descriptive translation theory is attributed to three small series meetings. They were held in Leuven in 1976, Tel Aviv in 1978 and Antwerp in 1980 respectively. The proceedings of the three conferences laid the theoretical foundation of the descriptive translation school and produced a group of backbone members. These scholars are university teachers, with literary research background, and have a strong interest in comparative literature and literary history. The descriptive school has made great progress in the 1980s. Susan Bassnett's Translation Studies (1980 edition, 1990 edition), Manipulation of Literature (1985, anthology), and Mary Snell Hornby's Translation Studies (1988) are all influential theoretical works in this period. In the 1990s, Lambert and Toury founded Target magazine. With the help of this position, a large number of articles describing the translation school were published, and more and more scholars joined this school. At the same time, these scholars use their influence to expand the role of translation studies in comparative literature and promote the status of translation studies. In the 1990s, with the collection of essays "Translation, History and Culture" edited by Bassnett and Levwell as an obvious symbol, the school of translation description appeared a cultural turn. Scholars began to study translation in the context of politics and culture. Power and manipulation were their main topics. Their research also involved feminism and post colonialism. In the year 2000 of the millennium, a seminar on translation research models was held in Manchester, England, with 200 participants. Almost all the active people of today's descriptive school attended the seminar. The meeting showed that the descriptive school is still developing vigorously, and many scholars have been exploring new areas. Of course, some scholars have withdrawn from this school.
The merit of the descriptive school lies in its correct positioning of various translations. It avoids the conceptual confusion and pointless and endless arguments caused by normative translation standards. The descriptive translation school has two basic understandings on translation. One is the "incompleteness" of translation, which means that you cannot translate 100% of the original text into the translation. On this basis, another understanding of the descriptive school is derived, that is, any translation has been manipulated by different translators, so the same original text will be in the hands of different translators, and there will be many different translations in different times. It should be emphasized here that the descriptive translation school does not want to completely overturn the traditional normative translation standards. They want to deconstruct the traditional translation theory, that is, to criticize some imperfections in the traditional translation theory, rather than destroy the traditional translation theory. Needless to say, normative translation standards have their own functions. It gives a goal that translation should achieve from the perspective of the theorist. However, its main disadvantage is that it always thinks its own standard is the only correct one, and wants to extend its scope to all translations in the world (such as Nida's theory of dynamic equivalence), or someone else wants to do so (such as Yan Fu's theory of faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance). However, it has not seen or is unwilling to admit that there are actually various translations in the world, some of which conform to this normative standard, but at the same time, there are many translations that do not conform to this standard or do not fully conform to this standard. Another disadvantage of the normative translation standard is that it confines itself to the narrow circle of language and regards translation as only a language art. The cultural environment is not considered too much. Even when it comes to culture, the ultimate goal is still to focus on specific translation techniques, focusing too much on the study of translation techniques. Perhaps it is precisely for this reason that normative translation studies are always inseparable from the debate between literal translation and free translation. On the contrary, the descriptive translation school is very tolerant. As long as you can explain why, no matter how "absurd" this reason was in the past from a traditional perspective, a text can be considered as a translation. The descriptive translation school is not interested in language. It tries to explore the causes of translation and the role of translation in society. With a little attention, there are many such marginal translations in the world, which are worth studying. An example of Ernst Agust Gutt may illustrate this point.
There are regular ro ro ferry flights between Travemunde in Germany and Helsinki, the capital of Finland. There is a kind of travel manual on the ship, in German and Finnish, arranged side by side. It has many unique features compared with general bilingual materials. First of all, the identity of the original text and the translated text is unknown. I do not know whether the German text or the Finnish text came first; Secondly, one third of the space introduces the scenery of the destination port. This part is not a translation between the two Guangxi provinces. The Finnish text introduces the scenery of the German destination port for Finnish tourists and the German text introduces the scenic spots of the Finnish destination port for German tourists. ⑩ From the perspective of the descriptive school, this is of course translation, because it meets the requirements of relevance in communication. Otherwise, if we blindly follow the "original" and "faithfully" literal translation, we will certainly make half of the readers feel that "translation is still untranslated", and it will not play the role of translation. Translation is also restricted by the ethics and literary norms of a country or a nation, and revealing this relationship is also a topic of great interest to the descriptive school. Take a look at the following example.
Original text: Lumber and boat and junk yard The bare behind of industry, its dirty underwear, so beautifully disguised by winter. eleven
There are also timber, boats and waste yards. Here is the industrial desolate backyard. These are its tattered underwear. Everything is cleverly covered up by winter. (Translated by Liu Hongxin)
Wood, boats, and quiet
Dock. The industrial waste disappeared under the cover of winter. (Translated by Huang Juan)
The bare trees, wood, boats and waste yards are covered by the white ground in winter. (Translated by Wang Li)
The metaphor of the bar behind in the original text was translated by none of the translators (30 people), but all of them used euphemisms such as "backyard", "waste", "garbage", etc. There are also few literal translators of Underwear. When the descriptive school sees such a translation, it does not care whether the translation is "faithful", but more about why the translator chooses such a translation method. Here, the translator is obviously affected by the Chinese writing methods, such as not writing dirty language into the articles. This kind of research method can make translation study deepen from another angle. Moreover, it is sometimes too simplistic to criticize the translated text for being unfaithful to the original without the cultural background, because strictly speaking, the "mistranslation" here should not simply be attributed to the translator's language ability. Another example is a passage in Chapter 9 of A Dream of Red Mansions, in which the Yang couple, who have always been known for their faithfulness, adopted an unfaithful "purification" translation method in their English translation. What we do is no business of yours It is interesting to note that David Hawkes, another translator of the full version of the Dream of Red Mansions, has taken a literal approach. His translation is as follows:.
The descriptive school can also provide a powerful theoretical weapon for the prosperity of translation practice and the enrichment of translation means. For example, the problem of how to deal with the contradiction between rhythm and content in the translation of Chinese poetry has been puzzling the translation circle. In the past, there were probably (only) two ways. First, like Arthur Waley, he kept the content and abandoned the rhyme; First, as Xu Yuanchong did, he kept the rhyme and partially abandoned the content (of course, Professor Xu would not accept this statement, he would think that he had translated the "beauty of meaning" of the original poem). Although we all know that the two cannot be balanced, no one has ever acknowledged it, so as to boldly retain only the voice (including rhymes) and completely abandon the content. With the advent of the descriptive school, the so-called phonetic translation actually appeared. See the following example:
Original poem (from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland):
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the King’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty (Dumpty) together again.
French translation:
Un petit d’un petit
S’etonne aux Halls
Un petit d’un petit
Ah! Degre te fallent
Indolent qui ne sort cess
Indolent qui ne se mene
Qu’importe un petit d’un petit
Tout Gai de Reguenne. twelve
This kind of translation only focuses on the phoneme of the original text, leaving aside other factors, including the content that is inseparable from faithfulness. The reason why people think of this translation method, which is called "phonetic translation", is first because they are soberly aware that according to the theory of the incompleteness of translation of the descriptive school, it is theoretically impossible to retain the rhyme of the original text and completely convey the content of the original text at the same time. Obviously, without the guidance of theory, this kind of translation method can not appear. When Zhao Yuanren translated another poem in the same novel, he used the word position translation method to create many Chinese characters and translate many English words created in the original text. It can be said that his translation is similar to the above translation. Before the prevalence of the descriptive school, Zhao's translation reflected Mr. Zhao's genius. When I first read Zhao's translation, I often got confused about "Is this also a translation?". Now I have learned the theory of descriptive translation school, and I deeply feel that the means of translation and the world of translation research are much more and more open than we imagined.