Translation Seminar Series

I shall present a simple, flexible and highly relativistic approach to the vexed question in Translation Studies of how to define and circumscribe 'translation'. My main argument is that in our scholarly models we have to make a radical distinction between three dimensions of texts and discourses: their status (what a text is claimed or believed to be in a given cultural community), their origin (the real history of the text's genesis, as revealed by a diachronically oriented reconstruction) and their features (as revealed by a synchronic analysis, possibly involving comparisons).

The article attempts to re-perceive, re-think and hence re-define the category 'traditional Chinese discourse on translation' in the light of prototype theory. Arguing that 'traditional Chinese discourse on translation' is a prototype category with two defining prototypical features, i.e., fuzzy boundary and graded membership, the author holds that the statuses of different members in the category of 'traditional Chinese discourse on translation' range from center to periphery: those drawn heavily from classical Chinese aesthetics and poetics are in the center of the category, and other members such as those involving in the discussion of what makes a translation in the periphery.

喬治三世致乾隆皇帝的國書，是英使馬戛爾尼訪華事件（1792-1794）中的重要文獻。這份文獻的翻譯過程曲折而耐人尋味，保存在清宮檔案中的中文副本顯示，英方以對等的姿態表達友好交往意願的國書，經由翻譯，變成了向中方輸誠納貢的英吉利國表文。本次講座引領大家追溯馬戛爾尼使華過程中的翻譯問題，並從話語的角度，對英王國書及其譯文進行解讀，以揭示從國書到表文的奇特變化，其實是天朝朝貢話語運作的必然結果。

近30年來，中國的翻譯研究蓬勃發展，已經成爲一門獨立的學科，但與西方的翻譯研究並未完全接軌。西方的主流學術思想和規範，例如區分研究和研究對象、區分純研究和應用研究、超然獨立、嚴謹論證等等，在中國尚未得到廣泛的認同。造成這種差異的原因，不單是中國的翻譯研究起步較晚，而且是東西方的學術系統，都植根于自身的文化土壤之中。

For most of his life Brewitt-Taylor (1857-1938) worked for the Imperial Chinese Customs Service; he also achieved distinction as a Chinese scholar. His masterly translation, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, was the first of the major traditional Chinese novels to be fully translated into English, the first draft of which being destroyed during the Boxer turmoil.

In the light of the descriptive and poststructuralist translation theories propounded by contemporary western translation scholars with regard to the reception of translation in the recipient culture, this paper attempts to explain an inexplicable phenomenon in Chinese Bible translation, which is considered irrelevant or simply being ignored in the prevailing approaches to Bible translation.

第一部分：結緣翻譯三十年簡述
第二部分：文學翻譯：重寫與競賽

1. 文學翻譯的特性使重寫與競賽具有必要性
2. 豐繁的翻譯理論使重寫與競賽具有可能性
3. 文學譯者綜合素質的提升使重寫與競賽具有可行性
4. 重寫與競賽翻譯實例舉隅和點評

This talk will address specifically the attitude of the censoring institutions to translation as a force that may undermine the interpretation of reality which the oppressive regimes hold as the official one and as the only one the oppressed populations are allowed to accept as true.

西洋詩歌觀念最初傳入漢語文學圈，有賴於來華的傳教士的譯介。在那眾多的西洋宣教士中，早先是歐洲各國的天主教士，繼而是那些新教傳教士，他們在歷時一千餘年間分四批先後來到中國，這其中又以近代時期英美新教傳教士的人數為最多。就在他們來華傳播宗教活動的同時，又將那些適合於吟唱的西洋宗教詩歌（其中包括英語聖詩）作為一種文化副產品介紹過來，而且從這些作品的生成方式來看，它們最初是譯者在服務於「求善」的宣教目的，而採用詩體形式傳譯過來的西洋聖詩，由此賦予了這些譯作若干「美」的內涵。

本文透過分析兩個當代翻譯的個案，反思：

1. 今時今日「所謂」翻譯工作及「正式的」翻譯工作之間的矛盾與互動；
2. 翻譯工作的本質/角色/使命/責任/地位、翻譯與雙語撰稿如何你中有我我中有你；
3. 翻譯工作如何在專業性、生活維度存在性、文化性、實用性之間尋找平衡；
4. 翻譯工作尊嚴之建立。