翻譯是溝通

翻譯是跨文化交際

首先，溝通涉及聽眾和說話人的意圖兩個要素。沒有聽眾，交流不會發生。同樣地，說話人的意圖如果不被理解，溝通就算失敗。因此，明白翻譯的目標群體是誰，并且確保說話人的意圖得到有效傳遞，這一點至關重要。

“聽眾設計”的概念由新西蘭社會語言學家艾倫·貝爾在其文章《語言風格為聽眾而設計》中首次提出，該文章于1984年出版后，產生極大的影響力。根據艾倫·貝爾的說法，人們講話的時候主要是回應其他人，而講話人會因聽眾不同而設計他們的演講風格。艾倫·貝爾將聽眾分為四種類型：1）受話者，是講話人了解的直接目的聽眾；2）旁聽者指在場但未被直接指定為目的聽眾的人；3）無意識聽眾，、指的是在話語范圍內但并未被指定或認可的聽眾，如在同一輛公共汽車上的乘客；4）竊聽者指的是不知是否在場的聽眾，如讀者或電視聽眾。

說話者有責任確定他的聽眾類型，然后相應地設計他的話語。否則，溝通就會受阻甚至造成溝通災難（下文將舉例說明）。

因此翻譯就像第一個講話人一樣，需要知道他的聽眾是誰，并相應地做出回應。這是確保翻譯作為溝通發生的主要條件之一。

翻譯不一定會帶來溝通，溝通不是事先給定的。那么溝通是如何發生的？據Sperber和Wilson（1995）的觀點，人類溝通涉及“表達”和“意圖認知”。意圖的認知依賴于上下文來闡明作者想要表達的信息，而這里的上下文是指能夠實現闡述過程的認知環境。所以認為信息一旦表達出來，就可以傳達給所有聽眾，且不用考慮他們的認知環境，這種看法根本就是錯誤的。

此外，聽眾的觀念和理解受到各自語言和文化的約束和限制。因此，翻譯時源語言聽眾的認知和文化背景與目的語聽眾不一致，翻譯人員需要確定不匹配或缺失的語境，并為其目的語聽眾提供一種認知環境，使其能夠獲取和源語言受眾一樣的信息。

例如，“癩蛤蟆想吃天鵝肉”。中國聽眾了解這句俗語的文化和認知背景，知道是取自一個蟾蜍和天鵝的寓言，但是英語聽眾缺少這樣的語境，不能理解蟾蜍和天鵝之間的特殊關系。在這種語境之下，我將其翻譯為：“Just as a toad craves for swan meat, an ugly man gets a pretty girl.（就像蟾蜍渴望天鵝肉一樣，丑陋的男人也想得到漂亮的女孩）”。如此便為英語聽眾添加了一種認知文化背景，以便解釋這個中國俗語。

另一個例子是 “男人四十一支花”。這句話中暗含的語境對于中國聽眾來說是已知的，但對于英語聽眾來說是是缺失的。40歲的男人不僅僅是一朵花，而是一朵盛開的花朵。所以應該翻譯成“A man at 40 is a like a flower in full bloom.（40歲的男人就像一朵盛開的花。）” 

翻譯語言就是翻譯文化。翻譯人員必須具備一定的知識和技能，識別并翻譯源語言文本中隱藏的和無形的認知和文化語境，以便目的語聽眾理解。

根據上述內容，我們可以得出結論，兩種語言和文化不存在同一性。翻譯過程中如果要尋找對等時，我們需要明白不存在無差異的對等，而且對等不等于復制。拿一個看似簡單的例子來說，走路時有些人的腳習慣向外轉，有的則會向內轉。這種情況用中文描述是外八字和內八字。中文最初是屬于表意語言，是一種象形文字。而英文對應的詞語分別是“鴨腳”和“鴿腳”，畫面感十足。所以我們可以說，雖然表達的是同一個意思，但是中文表達更客觀，英文表達更“多彩”。如果把中文“你走路是外八字腳”翻譯成英語“When you walked, you had duck feet（你走路時的腳是鴨腳）”，雖然指的是同一個行為，但英語讀者感受到的和中文聽眾感受到的有很大不同。

另一個有趣的例子是“備胎”。備胎在中英文中都是指汽車攜帶的備用輪胎，用于不時之需。但是備胎在英文中還有另一個含義，即“人腰部周圍的一圈脂肪”，因為腰部脂肪和輪胎很像。同樣，備胎在中文也有另外一層引申含義，即“備份的男朋友或女朋友”。所以 “你有備胎嗎”這個問題對中文讀者和英文讀者來說可能意味著完全不一樣的東西。

為了實現翻譯上的跨文化交際，需要熟練掌握基于跨文化和語際翻譯的處理技巧。 “你要沒有樹掛住，就掛了”，這句話按字面翻譯是“If you weren’t caught by a tree, you’d be dead（如果你沒有被樹掛住，你會死）”，然而， 這樣“掛”的雙關用法就會喪失，幽默效果蕩然無存。在中文，第一個“掛”是正式的表達，意思是“被抓住”。第二個“掛”是俚語，是 “死”的幽默表達。但英文中“被抓住”和“死亡”顯然不是同音異義，無法像中文表達那樣達到幽默的效果。所以我想出了英文中的另一同義詞表達同樣的效果：“If you missed, you’d be missed（如果你錯過了，你就死了）。”

將中國文化譯入英文的會面對各種語言學方面的挑戰，其中涉及同音異義的例子是“無法(發)無天”。 “頭發”一詞被發音為“fa”，聽起來和中文“法”一樣。英文中的“頭發”一詞更是與“法律”八竿子打不著。但是，如果我將無發翻譯成“bald（禿頭）”，將無法的含義擴展為“bold（大膽）”，最后譯文就是“You’re the boldest baldie I’ve ever met（你是我見過的最大膽的禿頭）”。

有時候只是要找到正確的關鍵詞來填補兩種語言間的差距，就像這句話“你要敢死，他就敢埋”中的明確性和幽默感體現在“spare（放棄，留出）”一詞上，如：“If you can spare your life, he’ll spare you a burial（如果你不要命，他就埋了你）”。

同樣，翻譯中的文化挑戰也十分有趣。我們知道，假定講話人和聽眾具有一致的知識是幽默的關鍵，所以源語種的參考信息通常被故意舍棄或隱藏，如“失敬，失敬，原來是蔡公公”這句話 。中文里“爺爺或祖父”可以稱為“爺爺”或“公公”，但“公公”還有另外一重含義是太監的尊稱。如果“蔡公公”譯成“蔡爺爺”，就缺少了幽默的意味；而如果譯成“蔡太監”，那就不免有些粗俗無禮，幽默感也同樣沒有了。在這種情況下就需要將潛藏的信息放到臺前，所以翻譯成：“My respects. So you served an empress in court（尊敬的大人，您在宮里服侍皇后）”。

再舉個類似的例子：我還有一個標簽就是“拆二代”。在中國，如果居民因國家項目建設如建造奧林匹克公園而被迫搬家時，他們會得到大量金錢補償，一夜暴富。所以如果有人稱你為“拆二代”，那就意味著你是一個富有的孩子。所以翻譯這類句子時需要展現出相關背景信息，好比這個譯文“I’m also known as ‘a kid whose parents got a payout when their house was demolished’（我也被稱為‘在房屋被拆時得到賠償的人的孩子）’。

有時候源語言中的隱喻需要替換成目的語中的另一個隱喻，以便將潛在信息傳達給目的語受眾。例如“吃黃豆了吧”。烤黃豆是中國飲食中一種常見的小吃，吃了容易使人放屁。所以中國人說“你吃了黃豆嗎？”意思就是問“你放屁了嗎？”但是英文 “你吃黃豆了嗎？”和“你放屁了么？”有很大不同，但冗長的解釋不能解決問題，而且會讓表達不夠自然。我的解決辦法就是將“Did you eat soybeans（你吃大豆嗎）？”改為“An upset stomach（你胃不舒服）？”。 

最后，我想說翻譯不是照鏡子，而是再創造的過程。翻譯后的譯文是全新的文本，有自己的生命，同時為我們看待原文開辟了新的視角。

Translation Is a Communication and Translation Is an Intercultural Communication

Jing Han

Firstly, communication involves two elements: audience and intended message. Without an audience, communication cannot happen. Equally, unless the intended message is understood, communication is defeated. So it is critical to know who the translation is for and to ensure that the intended message gets across.

The concept of “audience design” was first introduced by the NZ sociolinguist Allen Bell in his very influential article “Language Style as Audience Design”, which was published in 1984. When speaking, according to Allen Bell, people are primarily responding to other people, and speakers design their speech style for their audiences. Allen Bell classifies audiences into four types: 1) the addressee, who is known and addressed directly by the speaker; 2) the auditor, who is present but not directly addressed; 3) the overhearer, such as a passenger in the same bus, who is present but not as a ratified participant; 4) the eavesdropper, such as readers or a TV audience, whose presence is unknown. 

It is the speaker’s responsibility to be able to identify what types of audience he has and then design his utterances accordingly. Failure to do so leads to communication breakdown or even a disaster in communication (an example will be given). 

So a translator, like the first person speaker, needs to know who his audience is and respond to his audience accordingly. That is one of the primary conditions to ensure that translation as a communication occurs.

Translation does not necessarily lead to communication, and communication is not a given. How does communication happen? According to Sperber and Wilson (1995), human communication involves “expression” and “cognition of intentions”. Cognition of intentions relies on the context to interpret the intended message, and context here refers to a cognitive environment to enable the interpretation process. So the view that a message, once expressed, can be communicated to any audience regardless of their cognitive environment is simply false.

Furthermore, an audience’s perception and understanding are conditioned and restricted by their own language and culture. So, in translation, the source language audience’s cognitive and cultural contexts do not match those of the target language audience. Therefore, the onus is on the translator to identify the mismatch or the missing context and provide a cognitive environment for his target language audience to enable them to interpret the message understood by the source language audience.  

For example, 癩蛤蟆想吃天鵝肉 – “A toad craves for swan meat.” For the Chinese audience, the cultural and cognitive context for this saying is given in a known fable of the toad and the swan, but such a context is missing for the English speaking audience, who cannot fathom the special connection between the toad and the swan. In the context of how this was uttered, I translated this into: “Just as a toad craves for swan meat, an ugly man gets a pretty girl.” A cognitive and cultural context was added for the English speaking audience to enable the interpretation of this Chinese saying. 

Another example is男人四十一支花 – “Men at 40 are a flower.” The context, which is a given for the Chinese audience, is hidden, and hence missing for the English speaking audience. Men at 40 are not just a flower, but a flower in full bloom. So the translation should be, “A man at 40 is a like a flower in full bloom.”

Translating a language is translating its culture. A translator must have the knowledge and skill to identify and translate the hidden and invisible cognitive and cultural context in the source language text for the target language audience. 

Based on what is outlined above, we can conclude that sameness in two languages and cultures does not exist. In translation, while we look for equivalence, we need to be aware that there is no equivalence without a difference, and equivalence is not replication. Here is a seemingly simple example. When walking, some people tend to turn their feet outwards, some tend to turn their feet inwards. In Chinese, the descript ion is 外八字, outward “eight”, and 內八字 , inward “eight”. The Chinese description is very pictographic, derived from Chinese as an ideographic language. In English, the descriptions are “duck feet” and “pigeon toes” respectively, which are image-evoking words. So we can say that the Chinese expression is more objective, while the English expression is more “colourful”, even if both expressions refer to the same thing. When the Chinese sentence你走路是外八字腳 (when you walked, your feet were like an outward eight) is translated into English “When you walked, you had duck feet”, the impact on the English speaking readers is very different from that of the Chinese expression on the Chinese audience, again even if the expressions refer to the same act.

Another interesting example is “spare tyre”. A spare tyre in both English and Chinese refers to the tyre carried in the boot of a car for an emergency. But spare tyre has another meaning in English, which is “a roll of fat round a person’s waist”, deriving from the image of a tyre around one’s waist. Similarly, in Chinese, spare tyre also has another meaning derived from the word “spare” in the source expression, which is “a back-up boyfriend or girlfriend”. So the question “Do you have a spare tyre?” may mean something completely different to a Chinese reader and an English speaking reader.

To achieve an intercultural communication in translation requires skilful manipulation based on intercultural and interlingual competence. In this sentence, 你要沒讓樹掛住，就掛了, the literal translation is “If you weren’t caught by a tree, you’d be dead”; however, the pun using the homonym of “gua” and “gua” is missing in the translation and the humour intended from the pun is lost. In Chinese, the first “gua” is a formal expression, meaning “being caught”. The second “gua” is a slang word, meaning “die” in a humorous way. But in English, “being caught” and “die” are obviously not a homonym and cannot be connected in a humorous way as intended in the Chinese expression. So I came up with a different homonym in English which serves a similar purpose, “If you missed, you’d be missed.”

Another example of linguistic challenges in translating Chinese culture into English involves a homophone in the sentence無法(發)無天  – no hair/law, no boundary. The word “hair” is pronounced as “fa”, which sounds the same as the Chinese word for “law”. In English, the word “hair” cannot even remotely be related to the word “law”. However, if I translate 無發 “no hair” into “bald”, I can extend the expression無法 “no law” to being “bold”. The final translation is “You’re the boldest baldie I’ve ever met.”

Sometimes it is all about finding the right key word to bridge the gap between the two languages, as in this sentence 你要敢死，他就敢埋 – “If you dare to die, he’ll dare to bury you.” The clarity and humour are brought up by the word “spare”, as in: If you can spare your life, he’ll spare you a burial.

Equally, cultural challenges in translation can also be intriguing. As we know, assumed knowledge on the part of the speaker and recipient forms a key part of humour, so references are often deliberately missing or hidden in the source language. In this sentence, for example,  失敬，失敬，原來是蔡公公 – “My respects. It’s Gong Gong Cai.” In Chinese, “grandpa or grandfather” can be called “Ye Ye” or “Gong Gong”. But “Gong Gong” has a double meaning, since it is also a respectful term of address to a eunuch. So if “Gong Gong Cai” is translated as “Grandpa Cai”, the humorous touch is missing and lost. If it is translated as “Eunuch Cai”, that will be simply too brusque and the intended humour is equally lost. In this circumstance, the hidden reference needs to be brought to the fore, so the translation reads, “My respects. So you served an empress in court.” 

A similar example is presented in this sentence: 我還有一個標簽就是“拆二代” – “I have another label, that is, “a kid whose parents’ house was demolished”. In China, when residents are forced to move out of their houses for a state-run project in particular, for example, to build an Olympic park, they are compensated with a large sum and often instantly become rich. So if you are called “拆二代”, it implies that you’re a rich kid. So when translating, the background information needs to show up, as in this translation, “I’m also known as ‘a kid whose parents got a payout when their house was demolished’.” 

Sometimes, a metaphor in the source language needs to be swapped with a different one in the target language in order to bring the intended message to the target language audience. For example, 吃黃豆了吧 – “Did you eat soybeans?” Roasted soybeans are a common snack in the Chinese diet. Roasted soybeans also give one gas. So the Chinese expression “Did you eat soybeans?” implies “Did you fart?” However, saying “Did you eat soybeans?” is very different from saying “Did you fart?” And a lengthy explanation is not an option, as it would kill the spontaneity of the expression. My solution is to change “Did you eat soybeans?” to “An upset stomach?”

Lastly, I would like to say that translation is not a mirror. It is another creation. A translation text becomes a new text. The new text has a life of its own and it also opens up new ways of seeing the original text.