文本的未定性与翻译的解释性

翻译本质上就是解释,其解释性由许多因素决定,文本的未定性就是其中之一。在接受美学中,文本是处于未经读者实现状态下的文学作品的存在形式,其意义只有在读者阅读过程中才能产生,是文本与读者相互作用的产物,因此总是处于未定状态。正是文本的未定性导致了翻译不可避免地具有解释性,使译者在翻译过程中能充分发挥想象力,因而不同的译者可从不同的角度对同一源语文本进行不同的解读,形成不同的目的语文本。而且,文本的文学性越高,未定性程度也越高,译者对未定性的确定也越没把握,因而距离作者意图可能会越远,译者的介入程度和对文本的解释度就越大。

Translating is essentially interpreting. The interpretiveness of translating is determined by many factors, one of which is the indeterminateness of text. According to the Reception Aesthetics, text is the existence of the literary work before being realized by a reader. Its meaning is merely generated in the process of reading, in which text and reader interact on each other, and therefore is constantly indeterminate. Such a feature of text makes translating inevitably an interpretive activity, for the indeterminateness of text provides the translator with a vast space in which s/he can give full play to his/her imagination so that the same text, translated by different translators, results in different target texts. Furthermore, a text with more literariness tends to be more indeterminate, and consequently provides the translator with more choices in concretizing the indeterminateness. Therefore, his/her concretization tends to be farther away from the author＇s intentions. In such a case, the translator interferes, to a large extent, with the process of meaning generating, which results in a larger degree of interpretiveness of the source text.