Something about Chinese Translation:The Relationship of Source Texts and Discourse
By:
Michale Song
A considerable number of Chinese students take it for granted that features of discourse are irrelevant to their translation tasks, because both some books on translation and the assigned exercises of fragmental texts jointly convince them that translation is nothing but reproducing the sentences more or less word for word and any problems of the discourse will be automatically accounted for.
However, the opposite opinion is true. Contexts still count during the actual process of translating when the rendering is developing along the way of the unveiling of the source text or rather contexts, which means an overall arrangement and consideration should be employed in order not to neglect the development of the original discourse.
Generally speaking, while translating, three types of contexts should be dealt with, namely, major organizational features of texts, major content features of texts, and rhetorical features of texts.
In most instances, the major organizational features of most texts include time, space, class, connectivity, gradation, dialogue, and literary formulas, constructed out of frequently recurring formal structures. To make the issue more complex, there exists universally more or less fundament differences in the handling of such organizational features. Therefore, the rapid recognition of such features and their roles in discourses can be a distinct help to translators during the process of translating.
In addition to organizational features of time, space, class, etc., texts are also characterized by their content, namely, completeness, unity, novelty, appropriateness, and relevance, which in various ways and in different proportions make texts effective. Almost no discourse consists of a single type of feature. All these content features call for a keen awareness of texts’ development and continuity which in large measure depend on specific contexts.
Moreover, in order to enhance the impact and appeal of a text source languages unexceptionally employ a number of formal and semantic features. The principal formal features involve ordering, repetition, measurement, embedding, deletion or condensation, transition, reference, and nongrammaticality. The primary semantic features involve figurative language, parallelism or inversion, ambiguity or obscurity, polar contrasts (paradox, irony), overstatement or understatement, euphemisms, etc.. The number and distribution of such features differs widely in different kinds of texts and in different languages.
Introspection and retrospection originally stem from psychology. Introspection refers to the mental self-observation reporting of conscious inner thoughts desires and sensations. It is a conscious mental and usually purposive process relying on thinking, reasoning, and examining one’s own thoughts, feelings, and in more spiritual cases, one’s soul. It can also be called contemplation of one’s self. Introspection may also be used synonymously with self-reflection and used in a similar way. Retrospection, on the other hand, means reference to things past, a capacity to recall one’s states just after they occur, or the memory of the experiences that are past at are past. Some psychologists even tried to contrast retrospection and introspection.
However, in Chinese translation, the process of introspection and retrospection are mutually compatible, because introspection usually occur right in the process of translation, whereas retrospection functions in the post-translation stage. They both gain recognition by means of the realization of contexts. Otherwise, introspection and retrospection will be nothing but empty talk. Moreover, introspection and retrospection based on the recognition of contexts or discourses setting represent the core requirement of translation revision which weighs much in the whole translation procedure.
Generally speaking,Chinese translators gain a better and shrewder insight into the role of contexts upon introspection and retrospection. It works like a person standing high above the sky and enjoying a broader and clearer view of the things below. A purposively rewarding revision can be realized upon introspection and retrospection over contexts.
