涉华文献回译方法探析——以《前工业城市:过去与现在》的翻译为例

An Analysis of Back-translating China-related Literature——A Case Study of Translating The Preindustrial City:Past and Present

回译是一种特殊的翻译活动,以译文或相关素材为翻译对象,以考证原文的表述为旨归,涉及源文本到译文再回到源文本的双重过程。在回译涉华文献时,译者始终要做到有理有据:一方面,符合拟译文本的意思,另一方面,要考证中国文化中或历史上确有其人其物其事。这一过程类似"猜谜",需要译者发挥主观能动性,依据拟译文本的"谜面",猜测可能的"谜底",然后查找文献验证其真实性,直至找到最佳的"谜底"。

Back--translation, as one of particular translation activities, implies two translation processes： the implicit process of translating a source text into a target language and the explicit process of translating the translated text into the source text. It is aimed to restore the source text from a translated text. When a translator is back--translating a China-- related text, he is obligated to justify his back--translated text： on the one hand, the back--translated text shall be based on the text dealt with~ on the other hand, he shall authenticate the content of the back--translated text with the help of valid Chinese historical literature. The process of back--translating resembles a process of guessing a riddle, to the extent that a guesser shall give full play to his initiative to contemplate the information indicated by the riddle and search related literature to verify the information incessantly until he seeks out the reasonable answer.