문학적 번역론

Abstract

Translation has much more complicated problems in itself than in general accepted. Translation is almost impossible and very difficult especially when it comes to translation of literary works. In 1984, the researchers who were involved for many years in the study of literary translation in Gottingen university, Germany, declared with determination that linguistic theories of translation cannot contribute to the translation of literary works basically. We can assume that literary translation is something really subtle and specific. The reason why it is difficult to translate literary works is because literary translation is not a transposition of linguistic cords but is deeply related to cultural factors. For two thousand years traditional(prescientific) translation theory was concerned only with outstanding literary works. The most influential concept in the history of translation is the dichotomy of word and sense, which traditional translation theory never managed to overcome, and which still besets translation theory today. It was Cicero in the first century BC who departed from the dogma that translation necessarily consisted of word-for-word rendering and so formulated the alternative: "Non ut interpres … sed ut orator". For the next two thousand years translation theory was mainly limited to a heated discussion of this dichotomy. Well over a thousand years later, in 1530, M. Luther was to fight a similar battle with the Church authorities of his time over the translation of the Bible into Germany. He defended the same basic principles as St. Jerome's, but his words were a good deal more aggressive. The debate over the merits of the "faithful" and the "free" - the latter culminating in the "belles infideles" - continued to rage in Europe, and it found eloquent expression in Germany during the early years of the 19th century, when translation blossomed again with the romantic movement. After the announcement of Schleichermacher's well known treatise "Ueber die verschiedenen Methoden des Übersetzens(1813)" the emphasis has shifted from the category "not … but" to the more tolerant alternative "either … or". Schleichermacher makes it clear in his treatise that favours the Method of Verfremdung, or translation that is faithful to the original. Apart from the polarized approach represented in the dichotomy, translation theory also presented the means of differenciating and categorizing translation types. This approach was the one adopted by Dryden (l680). Here he distinguishes between metaphrase and imitation; between these two extremes is paraphrase. The two dominated methods in translation studies recently are those focused on primarily literary works, rejecting theoretical presuppositions, normative rules and linguistic method and those focused on linguistic matters, claiming a scientific approach and rejecting alogical solutions and subjective speculation. Naturally literary translation dismissed any scientific linguistic analysis; linguists dismissed non-scientific literary analysis. The Prague Structuralists viewed texts as incorporated within semiotic networks and languages as codes of complex language elements that are confined according to certain rule. Levy also incorporated the interpretive aspect into his translation theory, basing such deduction upon W. Quine's hypothesis that translation meaning can be logically interpreted.