翻译教学的描述途径

翻译教学的描述途径

Chang Nam Fung [作者惠寄]

A Descriptive Approach to the Teaching of Translation

Department of Translation, Lingnan College

Abstract

There is no absolute truth about the “correct” way of translating, even with regard to a specific text for a specific purpose, correctness notions being determined by the values and attitudes of a culture, and there are competing sets of translational norms in any community at any time. The problem with the prescriptive approach adopted in the teaching of translation practice in tertiary institutions in Hong Kong is therefore that the norms adopted by the teacher to evaluate student works are either divorced from reality, if they are derived from mere theoretical speculation, or they just reflect the values of a certain section of the community, if they are derived from practical experience.

In the first case the teacher is not doing much service to the community, and in the second case s/he is actually taking sides with one particular set of those competing norms. It may be in line with the Chinese tradition for the intelligentsia to be involved in norm-setting activities, but it seems to be inappropriate for the scholar to assume the role of the norm-setter in the classroom, teaching the norms upheld by his/her own school.

It is argued that a more descriptive approach to the teaching of translation practice is not only possible, but also more effective in training competent translators. This approach aims at developing in students all-round language skills and translation skills, and, most important of all, an ability to apply these skills flexibly to satisfy the demands of their clients or their boss, or to seek their own ends. This ability must necessarily be based on a thorough understanding of all phenomena related to translation -- not just products, producers, initiators and receptors, but also the whole spectrum of linguistic and translational norms, their changeability over time, and all the socio-cultural factors that have contributed to the formation of these norms.

1. The Prescriptive Approach to Translation Teaching

All the translation programmes run by tertiary institutions in Hong Kong at diploma and undergraduate levels attach paramount importance to the training of translators (and interpreters). Strictly speaking, they

belong to the domain of applied translation studies, which is an extension of translation studies proper, or “pure translation studies” in James S. Holmes’ typology, and the teaching of their practical courses seems to be more or less prescriptive or normative in nature.

The main problem with this approach is: what are to be prescribed for students? What criteria are to be used to evaluate their translations? In other words, what kind(s) of translational norms are to be adopted in the classroom? And what should be the relation between these classroom norms and those operative in the community?

My experience as a student and as a teacher tells me that there are sometimes a gap between what is taught in the classroom and what is required from the translation profession, as Lance Hewson and Jacky Martin observe:

Students of translation tend to think of the ST as a definitive and somehow untouchable entity which must be preserved in translation at all costs. This is, of course, the result of certain attitudes taught in translation classes, particularly at university level when the ST is taken from a work of literature. It is quite understandable that the “beauty” of the ST is often evoked, but again the reality of the translating profession suggests a very different attitude towards the ST. This is not to say that there are “literary” (and untouchable) texts in one group, and “other”(somehow inferior) texts in another group, but quite simply that the teaching of translation does tend to exploit certain values which the professional will rarely find of use.

This difference in values is clearly reflected in an English-Chinese translation exercise where the students were required to preserve all the cricket metaphors in a newspaper commentary on current affairs, on the ground that failure to preserve these metaphors would not be doing justice to the author. Practical questions such as the possible purpose of the translation, the potential venues of its publication and the comprehensibility of the text to its potential reader were simply not taken into account. It should be noted moreover that in this case source-oriented translational norms that are traditionally associated with literary classics were applied to a text that could be regarded as “vocative” in Peter Newmark’s classification of text types. In contrast, it seems safe to assume that the professional translator will most likely be required to produce a text that is comprehensible to a wide readership, if the text is to be published in a Chinese newspaper.

It seems that this gap is not unnoticed in academia. Generally speaking, those who recognize its existence may take three different attitudes towards it:

1. Academic training is different from vocational training. Thus,

translational norms taught in universities should be established purely according to academic principles, and norms operative in the real world, tainted as they are by all kinds of practical considerations, should be of little concern to the scholar.

2. The real world is full of imperfections. As academics we are in a position and have the duty to effect changes in the world. The very purpose of applied translation studies is exactly to make the quality of translations better, and this would involves the improvement of not only language and cultural competency and translation skills, but also translational norms.

3. The teaching of translation should not be divorced from reality, and students should be trained to comply with norms operative in the real world so that they can become competent translators, for competency means the ability to do what one is expected to do by the community.

If the first attitude is taken, reality can be conveniently ignored, and so can be the following discussion about translational norms. But this attitude seems to be futile because it regards the academic circle as a socio-cultural vacuum: since in a vacuum no action will lead to any consequence whatsoever, one set of norms is as good as any other and it does not matter which set is used.

The second and the third attitudes take positions vis-à-vis norms operative in the real world, and therefore we must take a closer look at these norms before we can discuss the attitudes.

2. Translational Norms and Norm-setting Activities

“Translational norms are the social reality of concepts of translational correctness; this social reality secures the coordination concerning form and use of translational means in a socio-cultural community.” But these concepts of translational correctness in the real world are not homogeneous and static. They vary with the types of the source texts, to say the least. To evaluate the “correctness” of a translation of a newspaper commentary by norms that usually govern the translating of canonized literature is therefore likely to be counter-productive for the purpose of translator training.

The commonly acknowledged “correct” way of translating a certain text also vary with the “prospective target situation”, or the “skopos”of the target text. Thus different translations of the same newspaper commentary may be needed for publication in a popular Chinese newspaper and for inclusion in a textbook of comparative cultural studies. Such correctness notions may differ even in relation to the same text translated for the same purpose. In other words, there exist what Gideon Toury calls “competing norms”:

It is not all that rare to find side by side in a society three types of competing norms, each having its own followers and a position of its own

in the culture at large: the ones that dominate the center of the system, and hence direct translational behaviour of the so-called mainstream, alongside the remnants of previous sets of norms and the rudiments of new ones, hovering in the periphery. This is why it is possible to speak -- and not derogatorily -- of being “trendy”, “old-fashioned”or “progressive” in translation (or in any single section thereof) as it is in any other behavioural domain.

But this does not seem to be a full account of the competing translational norms, because one obvious reason for their existence is that translation activities are anchored in a number of socio-cultural systems, such as the economic and the ideological besides the literary and the translational, and they put conflicting demands on the translator. A striking example is court interpreting in Hong Kong, where the “correctness” of the translation of certain idioms sometimes hinges on whether you are on the side of the prosecution or the defendant. For example, whether the word “整天” in “他整天陪我打牌” should be translated as “often” or “all day long” may be of vital importance for the establishment of an alibi, and a story goes that the defence counsel suggested that “幾大就幾大”, a Cantonese phrase usually used to express a determination to disregard the consequences of one’s action (which may be roughly equivalent to “豁出去了” in certain contexts), should be translated as “how big is how big” The purpose was of course to render the translation less damaging to the accused.

The relative force of competing and conflicting norms is ultimately based on relations of power, with the result that those norms set or accepted by dominant sections of the community become the dominant norms. Where translation in the Chinese world is concerned, the dominant section, or the “institution”, is formed by publishers and editors, critics, employers, academics -- or the most influential sub-group among them, and sometimes even those in the centre of power in the community.

The domination of a certain set of norms, however, is not absolute. Thus “the existence of a norm does not preclude erratic or idiosyncratic behaviour; nor can a norm prevent anyone from setting out deliberately to break it”, especially in fields with “relatively weak modalities of normative force and normative control”, such as literary translation; and an experienced and well-established translator may feel more confident than the young aspiring novice in ignoring the wishes and suggestions of norm-setters.

It should have been made clear by now that there is no absolute truth about the “correct” way of translating, even with regard to a specific text for a specific purpose, for correctness notions are determined by the values and attitudes of a culture; that is, they are culture-bound. Synchronically, translational norms differ among cultures. When I told

a Chinese official that in the first draft of my translation of Jonathan Lynn and Antony Jay's Yes Prime Minister I had rewritten a certain passage with “anti-China” sentiments when I was looking for a publisher in the Mainland, he queried, “but do you have the right to do so?” But on another occasion a British scientist working in Australia remarked that it must have been an enormous task to find Chinese substitutes for all those British jokes; and when I explained that the most frequently used strategy in dealing with culture-specific items in the text was literal translation with or without inter- or extra-textual gloss, he commented, “then it is an academic translation.” It seems that their different concepts of translation reflect the translational norms dominant in their respective cultural polysystems.

Diachronically, translational norms change in a particular culture. In the English-Chinese translation of place names, names of government officials, public notices and certain brand names in Hong Kong, there have been a gradual and continuous shift from foreignization to domestication since the 1950s. For example, the Chinese translation of the notice “Do not lean out of the window” was “請勿憑出窗外” on trams in the 1950s, and became “請勿將頭或手伸出窗外” on cable trams in the 1980s; “Philip Morris”, a cigarette brand name, was translated as “摩利士” in the 1950s, which was later changed to “摩哈利士”, and finally to “金徽 100” in the 1980s; and “司徒拔道” (Stubbs Road) was “史塔士道” some decades ago. One may conclude that these successive translations represent “progress” or “improvement” if one is to evaluate them by translational norms of the present time, but actually they are merely the products of different translational norms, and changes in these norms may have been partly due to the decline of British colonialism and the growth of Chinese nationalism, which is neither good nor bad from the translation scholar’s point of view.

Now let’s return to the second and third attitudes mentioned above. In view of the existence of conflicting and competing translational norms, “norms operative in the real world” has to mean the set of norms dominant in the community. Therefore, if one takes the second attitude, one is dissatisfied with the dominant norms and wishes to modify them by, or even replace them with, norms that are in peripheral positions; and if one takes the third attitude, one is in fact protecting vested interests. In either case one is taking sides with one set of norms or another. In other words, one is engaged in norm-setting activities.

Is it the business of academics to set norms? Some may argue that it is desirable, or at least inevitable, for them to involve themselves in social affairs, or even take part in social reform. And it seems to be in line with the good old Chinese tradition for the intelligentsia to be engaged in norm-setting activities. So we see not only translators and editors of translated works, but also translation teachers,

historiographers on translation and translation theory, and editors of reputable journals on translation studies, and even national leaders taking part in the struggle between rival norms, while very few people,

if any at all, play the role of the neutral observer and researcher of this struggle.

However, let me draw an analogy between the teaching of translation and that of political sciences. Imagine you are a teacher of political sciences in Hong Kong. No doubt you have your own views on every social issue, and you may even be a politician, an active member of one of the political parties, such as the Democratic Party, the Liberal Party, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong, or the Communist Party. There is nothing wrong in that, and actually there are a number

of well-known persons in Hong Kong with the dual capacity of a politician and a teacher of political sciences. Moreover, some students may enjoy the opportunity to learn political sciences from a real politician. But

if you advocate the creed of your party in the classroom, turning a university funded by public money into your own party school, you may be abusing your power as a teacher.

Most translation teachers in Hong Kong are (or have been) practising translators or interpreters, and practical experience is certainly a great asset for the teaching of translation. But there are different schools in translation just as there are different parties in politics.

It will not do translation students much good if teachers prescribe the norms of their own schools and use these norms to evaluate the performance

of students, especially if the teachers belong to the same school.

Most notably, young people who are in the early phases of their initiation as translators often behave in an extremely epigonic way: they tend to perform according to dated, but still existing norms, the more so if they receive reinforcement from agents holding to dated norms, be they language teachers, editors, or even teachers of translation. (emphasis added)

This observation made by Gideon Toury may provide translation teachers

in the Chinese world with good food for thought.

3. A Descriptive Approach Proposed

I do not agree with Toury that the “applied extensions” of translation studies “cannot be anything but prescriptive; even if they are brought closer to reality, [...] and even if their pluralism and tolerance are enhanced”. I believe that in the teaching of practical translation and even translation criticism a much more descriptive approach can be used, as long as we clearly separate our role as teachers from our role as translators and critics. The principle is that, as Theo Hermans recommends,

Translation Studies, as an empirical division of the human sciences,

should have no need to impose its own norms on the practice of translation.

I would extend this principle even to the Applied branch of Translation Studies. Teachers and researchers active in Applied Translation Studies are undoubtedly right in stressing the normative aspects of models and correctness notions in the socio-cultural systems for which translation caters. But they would do well to resist taking the shortcut of making those norms their own, or of deriving them directly from theoretical speculation, for doing so entails a fatal confusion between the discipline’s object-level (translational phenomena) and its meta-level (the scholarly discourse about translational phenomena). Unfortunately, the shortcut, and the ensuing confusion, is still a common occurrence, even among the more recent and enlightened approaches that label themselves communicative [...] or integrated [...].

The following are some suggestions for the implementation of this descriptive approach:

First, we should aim at improving the students’ language skills through translation exercises and by other means. Linguistic norms are usually more binding and many of them are in fact rules rather than norms, and therefore the teaching of languages can be more objective than the teaching of translation. For example, in a translation competition some participants translated “cricket” in an article about this favourite sport of the English as “蟋蟀” They had absolutely got it wrong, and the judge could exclude them from any prizes fair and square without reading their translations any further, because the deviation clearly constitute a grave translation error as it is due to ignorance instead of conscious use of translation strategies. But of course we must bear in mind that there are competing norms in language too. In Hong Kong, Hong Kong Chinese has been struggling with Standard Modern Chinese over domination, and there are signs that the balance is changing in favour of the latter because of the handover of sovereignty. Instead of prescribing one or the other set of norms, I think we should just teach students to distinguish between the two sets of norms and help them develop a fair command of both varieties of Chinese. What they are going to do with such knowledge and skills after graduation is their business. Second, we should train students in the mastery of basic translation skills, such as all the conservative and substitutive strategies in dealing with culture-specific items -- Linguistic (non-cultural) translation, extratextual gloss, intratextual gloss, limited universalization, absolute universalization, naturalization, deletion, autonomous creation, etc., or all the foreignization and domestication strategies in poetry translation. We may point out the possible effect of each strategy, but we should not pass a priori value judgement on them, such as “strictly speaking, naturalization and deletion are not

translation”. What we teach should not be “normative but descriptive in nature” -- it should not consist of “a series of prescriptions, but of descriptions of possible strategies translators can make use of and have made use of”.

Third, in translation exercises it may be highly desirable to simulate as far as possible translation situations in the real world. That is to say, we give students realistic and detailed definitions of the translation skopos, such as the intention of translation, the venue of publication, and the characteristics of the readership. Only then can we evaluate the quality of their works by the extent to which they may achieve the purpose. For example, if students are asked to produce a document for the Hong Kong Government, then “the fencing team of a university” should be translated as “一間大學的劍擊隊” rather than “一家大學的擊劍隊”, but of course twenty years later the second version may in all likelihood become the correct one.

If the text to be translated belongs to a field where there is fierce competition among norms -- which is another way of saying that normative force is weak -- we may “prescribe” a set of norms for the students, such as “translate the following poem using traditional Chinese prosody”But this should be done as a drill in translation techniques and strategies, where the prescribed set of norms should not be regarded as the only legitimate one or as superior to other sets of norms. Or, better still, we may allow students to choose for themselves one of the competing sets of norms, provided they know what they are doing, especially in their long translation project, where the teacher and the student have ample opportunities for detailed discussions.

Fourth, we should describe the various translational norms active in different situations, and teach students ways to find out these norms for themselves. It is in this respect that translation criticism can make the greatest contribution. Unlike traditional translation criticism, which “has been characterized by its tendency to find fault with the translator”, descriptive translation criticism should focus on reconstructing the strategies used by the translator, the norms behind these strategies, and the translation skopos and socio-cultural background that have determined the adoption of these norms. We may still find fault with the translator if we are able to prove that the “errors”are due to language incompetence or that the professed intention has not been fulfilled, but we have no right to judge the norms of the translator by our own, if the translator has chosen these norms with his/her eyes open.

To sum up, the community trusts us with the job to train competent translators, not translators of any particular schools. Competent translators must have all-round language skills and translation skills, and, most important of all, the ability to apply these skills flexibly

to satisfy the demands of their clients or their boss, or to seek their own ends. To develop such an ability they need to have a thorough understanding of all phenomena related to translation -- not just products, producers, initiators and receptors, but also the whole spectrum of linguistic and translational norms, their changeability over time (lest they become out-dated without themselves knowing it), and all the socio-cultural factors that have contributed to the formation of these norms. For the training of such translators I am convinced that a descriptive approach is more effective.

However, it must be admitted that in all human sciences absolute objectivity and descriptivism is impossible. As Theo Hermans points out, “our own descriptions [...] are shot through with interferences stemming from the concept of translation inscribed in our own language and culture, and from our ‘social persona’, our position and position-takings [...] in an institutional context”. But this should not prevent us from trying our best.