“巴别塔神话”的别样诠释与翻译使命再审视

The Myth of Babel Reinterpreted & the Mission of Translation Revisited

"巴别塔神话"在传统解读中被诠释为人类语言多样性的起源和翻译活动肇始的标志。这种认知将人类语言的分化溯源至上帝的惩罚,从而使语言多样性被视为一种消极现象,亦使得翻译的使命被设定为在消弭这种多样性的基础上追求语言的同一。然而,传统解读并非诠释"巴别塔神话"寓意的唯一可能。本文在揭示传统解读存在缺陷的基础上,回归神话文本所在的《圣经·创世记》语境,提出了别样诠释的可能,即"巴别塔神话"的真实寓意在于肯定语言多样化对人类发展的积极意义。文章继而通过对本雅明提出的"纯语言"这一概念真实内涵的剖析,从现代翻译理论的视角进一步为前文所做之别样诠释张本,以破除人们在"纯语言"概念和语言同一之诉求间建立的对等关系,建立正确的翻译使命观。

The myth of Babel has long been construed as accounting for the diversity of human language and giving rise to the translational activities. On this view, the diversity of human language came about as a curse of the God and, therefore, received a negative interpretation. In seeking to remove this diversity, the mission of translation, accordingly, consists in bringing about the existence of a single unifying language. This paper, however, argues that the traditional interpretation of the myth is not without its problems, and that, if the original context of the myth in the Genesis were taken into account, we would be led to realize that the myth was de facto an affirmative recognition of the diversity of human language. Moreover, subjecting Benjamin＇s concept ＂pure language＂ to a reexamination from a modern translation perspective might lend further support to this realization should an appropriate understanding of the mission of translation be fostered while deconstructing the exact correspondence between the pursuits of a ＂pure language＂ and a single unifying language.