试论文学翻译的生成性

On generativity of literary translation

翻译活动日益呈现出丰富性与复杂性,亟待译学界从多元视角深化对翻译及其本质特征的认识与把握。然而,在译学界对翻译本质的传统认识中,仍存在某些局限性的看法和有待澄清的困惑,并可能由此导致对翻译根本性问题的片面理解。对此,本文认为,就文学翻译而言,应从文本生命诞生、延续与发展的整个历程出发,从翻译活动所处的以自我与他者关系为中心、包含文本内外多重要素的互动系统出发去理解翻译、把握翻译的本质特征。基于这样的认识,本文从原作新生命的诞生、文本意义的理解与生成、译本生命的传承与翻译的成长三个方面进行探讨,提出翻译最核心、最重要的本质特征在于其生成性,并力求由此揭示翻译活动的系统性与成长性。

As translation activities are becoming increasingly complex in content and abundant in form, there is now an urgent need to get deeper understandings of the essence of translation from more diversified perspectives. In our traditional cognition of the essence of translation, some limitations and confusions that often generate one-sided understandings remain to be removed in our discussion of fundamental issues in translation. The paper holds that, in order to get to the very essence of literary translation, we are going to take into consideration the whole process of the translation which contains birth, continuity and development of the text, examining the relations between 'self' and 'the other', as well as the interaction system formed by intratextual and extratextual elements. Based on this, and by putting forth the idea that the core and the most fundamental essence of translation lies in its generativity, the paper explores the systematicness and generativeness of translation from three aspects: 1) the birth of a new life of the original text; 2) the comprehension and production of the textual meaning, and 3) the extension of the translated text and the growing of translation itself.