研究问题，深化协作，交流经验，培养更多家长满意，社会欢迎的MTI人才

——在“广西译协第二届MTI协作与教学研讨会暨MTI研究生论坛”闭幕式上的讲话

刘绍忠

2017年6月11日

广西民族大学国教楼401室

各位同行，各位同学：

        作为广西译协重头工作内容之一的一年一度的MTI协作与教学研讨会暨MTI研究生论坛，经过会议组委会高节奏，高效率的组织安排下，在全体与会者的共同努力下，就要结束了。会议安排我做“闭幕式致辞”，我不敢当。我想借这个机会，说三点体会或意见。

        一、会议开得很成功。一是会议成功邀请到多位我们慕名的见过或没有见过的学者，这对我们师生都有激励作用。二是通过学者们的分享各自的最新研究，丰富了我们对国内翻译界的知识，对一些研究前沿，有了个大致的了解，学者们讨论的问题，激发了我们的兴趣，刺激了我们的思考。三是这次会议的议题，以外语如何服务“一带一路”国家发展战略为视域，以“中华文化走出去行动方案”为语境，以学科建设和翻译能力培养为话题，对全区的MTI培养，有诸多的启示。

        从MTI教学角度看，学者们的主旨发言，其实涉及到9种能力的培养：译者的文化及文化交际能力（罗选民教授）、译者的本体能力/语言能力（谭载喜教授，在这个多元化的时代，说清楚这点十分重要！）、译者的跨文化意识及跨文化交际能力（谢天振教授）、译者对文化外译多模态并用及优化能力（黄忠廉教授）、译者的问题意识与方法选用能力（查明建教授）、译者的翻译批评能力（蔡新乐教授、司显柱教授）、译者开展翻译中对现代语言技术、资源平台、数据资源的使用能力（王华树教授、戴光荣教授、徐颖教授）、译者充分利用教学实践基地，主动让基地服务自己、提升自己的合作能力（王旭泉主编）。

        二、从国际译学研究的高度，不断定位和调整我们的研究努力。一是为了学会和说国际普通话（translationese）（学会和使用译界学术语言、思维习惯，共守国际译界标准）。二是知己知彼，防止闭门谈学问做研究，避免重复浪费。三是要把握国际译学界几个本体论的话题（Hickey, 2000：），需要注入与时俱进的认识和理解的问题：

1）译者是什么样的人？

For as long as individuals have communicated with one another through the mediation of someone else, there has probably been a realization that mediators do something more complex and more interesting than simply substitute their own words, one by one, for the originals. Since the early 1950s (Nida, 1952), however, there has been an upsurge in serious studies of translation, both in its theoretical, historical, didactic and professional dimensions and in its practice at the point when translators do something in response to their own reading of a text and which leads to the production of a second text. In particular, it is now understood that translators do not simply ‘say’ in one language what somebody or some piece of writing has ‘said’ in another. (Hickey, 2000:1)

2）翻译是怎样发生的？

Whatever translation is in its entirety, it seems to involve semiotic, linguistic, textual, lexical, social, sociological, cultural and psychological aspects or elements, all of which are being studied nowadays as determining factors in whatever the translator does.  It is also becoming clear that, as in any other form of rewriting (Gentzler, 1993:ix; Lefevere, 1992), this implies manipulation and relates directly to ideology, power, value systems and perceptions of reality. (Hickey, 2000:1)

3）翻译的客体是什么？

One of the many questions that recur, explicitly or implicitly, in these investigations is whether there is some objective entity, linguistic, semantic or psychological, expressed in or by an ‘original’, which can then be captured by a different text, the translation. In other words, is there something in, behind, underneath or belonging to a piece of writing in one language which can be extrapolated ad safely packaged in another? After all, at first sight, something seems to survive and pass more or less intact from one text to another in the process and the product of translation. (Hickey, 2000:1)

Perlocutionary effect (2000)

4） 翻译要译什么？（翻译可以省去什么？可以做到绝对对等吗？是要结构形式上的对等还是功能上的对等？）

Pragmaticforce (He, 1994); Perlocutionary effect (2000)

What is it, then, if anything, that is actually translated, transferred, between one text and another? Is it some part, ingredient or linguistic element of the text itself, or is it something less direct about the text, such as a particular reader’s reaction or interpretation of it?

And what happens to those elements which are not transferred? Are they irrelevant, surplus to requirements, treated as of no importance and simply ignored?

Is translation some kind of science, pure or applied, prescriptive or descriptive, or is it practical art or craft, which cannot be discussed until the event, analogously to a conversation about the beauty of a sunset or a bird in flight? 

If the notion that something remains unscathed in the process of translation is too extreme, then perhaps there may be aspects of the original and the translation which, if not identical, are at least equivalent to one another.

For some time now, the notion of equivalence, or rather equivalences, has been debated with varying degrees of enthusiasm and conviction (Bassnett, 1991:23-9). It may also be that translation is merely an approximate, imprecise procedure, and that any text has so many dimensions that equivalence on one may be incompatible with equivalence on some others.

For example, linguistic equivalence (an extreme case of which word be word-for-word translation) may conflict with dynamic equivalence (stimulating an effect in the reader of the translation similar to that caused in the reader of the original), in the sense that if the linguistic surface of both texts is similar, the effect on their readers may necessarily be very different, and vice versa. And does translation deal with what the original author intended or simply what is expressed by the text?

5）翻译学科应该怎么命名？

Among the many approaches to research on translation which are yielding useful insights nowadays, Translation Studies has been in particular favor since the mid-1960s (Bassnett, 1996:6). Translation Studies concentrates on describing and analyzing the procedure or processes, rather than commenting on the product itself ad asking how well or badly any particular translation has been done.  This non-prescriptive approach, among others, is interested in how translation is actually done, examining the methods that have been used throughout history and asking how texts fit into the receiving cultures. (Hickey, 2000:2)

叫什么样的名字，就做什么样的事；MTI师生，就要做、必须是master in translation and interpretation! 除了动手能力强，理论也要娴熟；不仅要做翻译实践，还要做翻译研究，要知道怎么译，怎么译更好更有道理！

6）翻译应该怎么教？（翻译的教学目标、内容、方法、质量监控手段、评估验收理念与工具）

Much work is also being carried out on the teaching of translation, with or without some kind of theoretical or academic underpinning. 

Universities and similar institutions educate graduates who go on to earn their living as translators. Some courses use translation merely as methodological tool for language teaching, without claiming to train translators, while others provide training in all aspects of the translator’s work including practice in registers, gathering and storing terminology, compiling data bases, documentation, IT etc.

Closely related to teaching is assessment or evaluation, quality assurance or revision of translation, as part of the process itself or carried out on the product. It is done on various levels, from the practitioner’s own impressionistic assessment of a first draft or a teacher’s equally subjective, but perhaps more experience-based, comments on a student’s piece of work to more academic attempts to develop systematic methods for the evaluation of professional work (House, 1976).

The profession of the translator, with its problems and practical considerations, is sporadically, though seldom systematically, treated in journals and newsletters.

The practice of the profession under pressure, working to deadlines, satisfying different types of clients, using dictionaries of all kinds, whether monolingual or multilingual, general or technical, hard-copy or computer-based, by in-house or freelance practitioners, making use of expert or other informants (often the clients themselves) is occasionally discussed, usually on an anecdotic level. (Hickey, 2000:2-3)

7）翻译研究应该研究什么？

Despite much research and even calls for general theories and systems to explain or describe the translation process (Bassnett, 1993:248), most work on the subject matter continues to address specific problems and individual elements or aspects of translation, including comparisons of brief texts with their originals.

These studies range from the treatment of such detailed points as puns or culture-specific terms to advice on how to handle legal documents between systems which have neither terminology nor legal entities in common; they may rely on intuitive reactions to the ‘readability’ of a particular translation or on academic investigations of contrastive structural linguistics. The volume of work being done and the multiplicity of approaches used suggests that the study of translation is actively attempting to emerge from its infancy. (Hickey, 2000:3)

8）新兴学科与翻译的嫁接和关系处理。

To pragmaticians, translation is about ‘doing things with words’, after Austin’ (1962) work How to Do Things with Words. If we return to the question of whether there is something in an original text which is carried over in its translation, a pragmaticist might suggest that something does indeed survive the process, namely (at the very least) what is potentially done by or in the original text, since the translation has the capability.

In general, pragmatic approaches attempts to explain translation – procedure, process and product – from the point of view what is (potentially) done by the original author in or by the text, what is (potentially) done in the translation as a response to the original, how and why it is done in that way in that context. (Hickey, 2000:4)

My contention then is that, just as the ST is capable of producing or likely to produce or stimulate one or more analogically related perlocutionary effects on its original readers, so also any TT must, in turn, be capable of producing ‘analogous’ rather than ‘similar’, allows for the fact that, just as not all ST readers or their contexts are the same, so also the TT readers may be quite different, and situated in different contexts, from any of the ST readers. (Hickey, 2000:219)

        三、改进建议。一是一线教师交流的议题很好（议题1：教师团队建设及专业发展；议题2：翻译专业课程及教材建设；议题3L翻译专业学生的专业素养及能力培养），但时间安排太短，9：20-10：00，不到一节课时间！二是为研究生提供学习和交流提供平台这个宗旨很好，但安排研究生的发言交流时间太短，10：20-11：20，一个小时，29人发言，规定没人5分钟之内，老师们点评的时间没有，同学们获得的帮助就有限。三是太限于内部的交流，其实可以邀请区外院校MTI师生（师大比较重视，29个发言的研究生，师大23个，民大5个，桂电1个，西大、科技大0个），以及东盟国家的翻译同行过来交流指导。四是为了提供教学质量和研究水平，要做到“四多”：多实践、多读经典、多思考、多交流。

        最后，感谢会议承办单位广西民大领导对本届会议的重视和支持，尤其是会务组师生们的辛勤付出和高效工作，感谢各位院长们、MTI项目负责人、MTI导师们、MTI同学们的支持。我们明年再见！谢谢。

参考文献

Austin, J. (1962). How to do things with words. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Baker, M. (1993). Corpus linguistics and transaltion studies: Implications and applications. In M.

Baker, G. Francis and E. Tognini-Bonelli (eds.), Text and technolgy: In honor of John Sinclair. Philadelphia/Amsterdma: John Benjamins.

Bassnett, S. (1991). Translation studies. London: Routledge.

Hickey, L. (2000). The pragmatics of translation. Shanghai: SFLEP. Reprinted from the 1998 verion by Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd.

House, J. (1976). A model for translation quality assessment. Tubingen: Gunter Narr.

Gentzler, E. (1993). Contemporary translation theories. London: Routledge.

Nida, E. (1952). God’s word in man’s language. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Lefevere, A. (1992). Translating, rewriting, and the manipulation of literary fame. London: Routledge.