譯者主體性與語言生態

Translators’ Subjectivity and Linguistic Ecology

翻譯定義不下千百種，鮮少有如貝爾曼 (A. Berman) 所建議者如此耐人尋味—吟唱詩人所謂「遠方的驛站」—帶有母語懷柔之心，殷勤接待他者。事實上，亙古以來多少譯者克服了來自遠方語言的障礙，最終只是迴音一場！抑或被霸權窒息的偏遠聲音，終究找到驛站發聲？本文將以貝爾曼翻譯批評中有關譯者倫理的觀點為主，以皮姆 (A. Pym) 翻譯史的方法論為輔，回顧與探討在五四運動前後所發生之翻譯高潮，其相關譯者在當時社會、政治、經濟、歷史與文化脈絡的醞釀之下，對翻譯理論所產生的歷史詭辯與軌變，以及譯者主體性的興衰更迭；其中，尤其針對翻譯活動對中文語言演進的生態所產生的影響提出論述。

Hundreds of definitions of translation have been suggested over the years, but few are as intriguing as the one offered by A. Berman (1942-1991), who said that translation is the “inn of the remote of the troubadour, which receives strangers within the very heart of mother tongue.” In fact, since the dawn of humankind, how many translators have helped to surmount the barriers of distance with a translation which yet provided a mere echo—as if the voice of the remote, silenced by hegemony, finds its own voice? This article focuses on the ethics of translation, an approach to translation studies proposed by Berman and supported by A. Pym’s methodology of translation history. Using their arguments about the translator’s subjectivity, I focus on translations from other languages into Chinese around the time of China’s May 4th movement. Here I explore such questions as how, in the social, political, economic and historical contexts of that time, might Chinese translators have changed the historical discourses and trajectories of translation theory? How, then, was the translator’s identity altered? Among other issues, I am especially interested in the impact at this time of the Chinese translations of foreign language texts, and of what one might call the ethics of foreignization, on the evolution of the Chinese language itself.