翻译与混杂文本

Translation and Hybrid Texts

本文简要回顾了直译和意译向异化和归化的演变,进而引出混杂文本的概念,指出:混杂文本是由于跨文化交际和引进他国文学的需要以及国际化进程的不断增强,在翻译过程中通过吸收源语文化中某个语类的部分或全部异质特征、经过目的语文化规约系统的修正而在目的语文化中生成的;混杂文本具备多种功能,它有助于目的语文化中新语类的形成,有助于传播源语文化知识。对于混杂文本的深入探讨有利于加深我们对翻译本质的理解。

Translation plays a vital role in intercultural communication and it invariably brings different languages and cultures into close contact. In the process of this contact, conflicts often arise, the result of which means introducing to the target language new genres which bear features of hybridity. Hybrid texts are texts which result from the translational process, in which the translator, when faced with three choices (namely, translating from the perspective of foreignization, of domestication, or of compromise between two languages involved), makes the third choice through which a compromise is worked out between the two languages involved in translation. Hybrid texts exhibit features that somehow seem 'out of place' or 'strange' or 'unusual' for the target language. These features do not originate from a lack of translational competence, nor are they examples of 'translationese' . Rather, they are indicative of the conscious or deliberate decisions made by the translator. Although hybrid texts may not yet be fully established in the target language (because they do not conform to the established norms and conventions of the target language), they can often be accepted in the target language because they fulfill their intended purposes in the communicative situation (at least for a certain period of time). Specifically, the following three points account for the formation of hybrid texts. (1) When there is no established genre to serve as a model or pattern for people to follow in the target language, a new genre needs to be introduced from another language. (2) In literary translation, a particular literary genre does exist in both the source and the target languages, but the target text is not produced by following the generic conventions of the target language; as a result, a new genre will come into being in the target language. (3) Globalization often leads to homogenization of different genres or heterogeneity of a single genre, and as a consequence, the specific linguistic and cultural conventions get mixed up and infiltrated into each other, and a hybrid text is thus generated. Hybrid texts embrace part or all of the features of a source genre and at the same time are modified by the norms and conventions of the target language. They have multiple functions, the main ones of which are to form new genres and to convey the cultural information of the source language to the target language. Therefore, a discussion of hybrid texts will enhance our understanding of the nature of translation.