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2 陈心怡 History of Translation Theories of Russia after the collapse of Soviet Union Hist_Trans_Theo_EN_2

Abstract

In the history of translation, Russian and Soviet translation theories have played a pivotal role in the world translation scene, and Russian and Soviet translation theorists have made great contributions to the development of world translation literature. Although it has only been thirty years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the study of Russian translation theory has been receiving a lot of attention from scholars in China. This paper focuses on the history of the development of translation theory in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, firstly stating the current situation of translation in Russia after the collapse, then outlining the new development of Russian translation theory after the collapse, and finally introducing the main translation ideas of the two most important translation theorists at this period.

Key words

History of Translation, Translation theories, Russian translation theorists, Translation ideas.

Introduction

It is obvious from the history of Soviet translation theory that, like other countries, Soviet translation theory has also gone through a process from scratch, from fragmentary views to systematic theoretical discussions. From a global perspective, Russian translation theory is one of the important branches of translation theory in the world. Russian translation studies began in the Kievan Rus' era, and from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries until the beginning of the twentieth century, Russian translation studies developed along their own trajectory. Prior to the 1950s, literary translation theory had dominated Soviet translation theory, and from the 1950s onward, the linguistic school of translation began to rise and engage in a lively academic debate with the literary school, which subsided in the 1980s, with the linguistic school of translation thought gradually taking the lead. The process of translation was briefly suspended by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, but soon thereafter, the translation business was relaunched and translation theory developed significantly. This paper provides a brief introduction to the history of translation theory in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, based on the translation ideas of two famous Russian translation theorists, V.V.Stobnikov and G.Р.Garbovsky, as well as a number of translation theory monographs that have been published in Russia in the past thirty years.

The current state of translation in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union

In 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved and the the Russian Federation was born. This major regime change briefly halted the process of translation. Shortly thereafter, the translation business was relaunched and developed rapidly, although there were significant changes in the practice of translation.

On the eve of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the commercialization of the translation circle was already visible, and in order to increase sales, publishers no longer had rules and restrictions on the selection of titles. Not only popular literature of low quality, but also pornography was published. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, publishing houses were privatized and some were profit-oriented. The selection of titles was so unrestricted that some works that were controversial in the West were translated and published in Russia without fail. As the number of translators increased dramatically with the infinite expansion of translated subjects, the publishers did not care to select translators and adopted a "matchmaking" approach. The quality of translations, especially of literary works, further declined. The excellent tradition of translation, editing and publishing, which was established by Gorky, Chukovsky and other previous translators in the early years of the Soviet Union, has disappeared.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian government adopted a very liberal policy both for the entry and exit of ordinary people, for international cultural and scientific and technological exchanges, and for the export and import of trade. As a result the need for interpreters and translators increased greatly, and enlightening translation textbooks [e.g., "How to Become a Translator? («Как стать переводчиком?») Miniar- Beloruchev, Moscow, 1999] came out one after another. Theoretical research in the translation circle was not interrupted by the collapse of the Soviet Union. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a group of theoreticians active in the 1970s and 1980s continued to work in the field of translation. A number of monographs are still being published. It is worth mentioning: Minyar Beloruchev, "Theory and Method of Translation" (Moscow. 1996), Gak and Grigoriev, "Theory and Practice of Translation Theory" (reprint, Moscow, 1997), Obolenskaya (Ю.Л. Оболенская), "Dialogue of Cultures and Dialectics of Translation" ("Диалог культур и диалектика перевода", Moscow, 1998), Komissarov, “General Theory of Translation” (Moscow, 1999) and “Modern Translation” (Moscow, 2001), Topel, “Translation in the System of Comparative Literature” (Moscow, 2000), Alekseyeva ( И.С. Алексеева) "Professional training of translators" ("Профессиональное обучение переводчика", St. Petersburg, 2000; Moscow, 2001), Bransted and Provotorov (М.П. Брандес, В.И. Провоторов) "Pre-translational analysis of the text" ("Предпереводческий анализ текста", Moscow, 2001), Ratyshev "Translation techniques" (Moscow, 2001), Kazakova (Т.А. Казакова) "Literary Translation" ("Художественный перевод", St. Petersburg, 2002), Komissarov's "Translation Linguistics in Russia" (2002), Nelyubin's "Detailed Dictionary of Translation" (Moscow, 2003) Garbovsky (Н.К. Гарбовский) "Theory of Translation" ("Теория перевода", Moscow University Press, 2004, for details see chapter devoted to Garbovsky). In addition, there are collections of essays "Translation and communication" ("Перевод и коммуникация", Moscow 1997), "Problems of French language and translation theory" ("Вопросы французского языка и теории п еревода", Moscow, 1999), "University Translation Studies" ("Университетское переводоведние", St. Petersburg, 2000), "Language and Culture. Linguistics, Poetics, Comparative Culture, Theory of Translation" ("Язык и культура. Лингвистика, поэтика, сравнительная культурология. теория перевода", Moscow, 2001 ), etc. In this period, there is a noteworthy phenomenon: the expansion of translation teaching and research beyond the traditional "frontiers" of cosmopolitan cities (Moscow and St. Petersburg) into the Russian hinterland. Among the representative textbooks are В.В. Сдобников and О.В. Петрова's "Theory of Translation" (Nizhny Novgorod, 2001, see the chapter devoted to Stobnikov) and И.Э. Мохова's "Theory and Practice of Translation" (Novosibirsk, 2002). These textbooks are mainly for the use of university students of translation-related specialties, and they sort out, summarize and conclude various views in the Russian translation scene, expressing their opinions on different points of view, but without any significant theoretical breakthroughs. Not enough this work will develop in depth with time, and in time quantitative changes may cause qualitative changes.

Following a ten-year hiatus in 1999, the academic-theoretical anthology "Notes of a Translator" was relaunched. The Russian Association of Translators (Союз переводчиков России) started publishing a regular journal of theoretical and practical nature "Translation World" ("Мир перевода").

At the end of the 1990s, Shvetsel changed his view from the 1970s - that translation theory should belong to applied linguistics - and proposed that translation theory is an interdisciplinary science (Междисциплинарная наука), which It is possible to overcome the "isolationism" between linguistics and literature, and the tendency to develop an integrated and multidimensional approach to the analysis of translation in the discipline will develop. He points out that this methodological orientation is prompted by the fact that "linguistics itself has expanded its boundaries, abandoned the 'discrete' tradition, established close ties with other disciplines, and emerged as a science capable of promoting the mutual enrichment of linguistics and a range of marginal disciplines. The new direction of 'conjunctive' ('дефисный')". (The interdisciplinary status of translation theory "Междисциплинарный статус теориии перевода", in "Journal of translators", Moscow, 1999, 21 p.) On the idea of interdisciplinary study of translation theory Fyodorov, "General theory of translation (Fundamentals of Translation, Higher School Publishing House, 1983, p. 119) was already proposed in the 80's and was already reflected in practice. For example, in the work on simultaneous translation the author used linguistics, psycholinguistics and psychology. Again, for example, Komissarov's ideas in the first part of Modern Translation (see the chapter devoted to Komissarov for details). However, turning this interdisciplinary study into an interdisciplinary discipline is not acceptable to some scholars. For example, Galbovsky in Theory of Translation (Moscow University Press, 2004) states: "The theory of translation goes far beyond the framework of linguistics, because the characteristics of the object under study require the absorption of knowledge and methods from other disciplines such as logic, culture, anthropology, ethnography, psychology, sociology, etc. Does this prove the interdisciplinary status of translation theory? Does it prove that it is a so-called 'hyphenated' scientific orientation? I am afraid, not so. It proves that translation as an object can be studied from different aspects and by different disciplines. ...... The object of translation research requires an interdisciplinary approach, but an interdisciplinary approach to its object and its interdisciplinary status are two different things when the disciplinary orientation is the same." (p. 205-206)

After Fyodorov, Komissarov is active in the Russian translation scene. He accomplished a historic task by introducing the concept of "modern translation studies" and advocating an interdisciplinary approach to translation studies, thus pushing Russian translation studies to a new stage.

Inheritance and Development of Russian Translation Theory

Compared with the glory of Soviet translation theory in the 20th century, Russian translation theory, in terms of research fields, on the one hand, inherits the original research traditions and provides new interpretations of traditional issues; on the other hand, it explores issues that were not covered by the predecessors, or were rarely covered. Many traditional problems of translation theory have been newly interpreted after the collapse of the Soviet Union, such as the problem of equivalence and the problem of translation shifts.

Reinterpretation of the equivalence problem

The problem of equivalence received a lot of attention for along time in the Russian-Soviet translation theory. "In 1950, the first creator of translation linguistics, Letsker, published a paper "On regular correspondence in translation". The paper distinguished the following kinds of correspondences: equivalents (эквиваленты), analogues (аналоги), which were changed to (вариантные соответствия) and reciprocal alternatives (адекватные замены) in the author's later discourse." (Yang Shizhang, 2001) After Рецкер, the idea of equivalence was established in the studies of translators such as А.В.Фёдоров, З.Д.Львовская, etc. In the 1980s, as the concept of equivalence in translation was proposed and established by В.Н.Комиссаров and А.Д.Швейцер, the idea of equivalence in Russian translation theory also gradually matured.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, translators continued to further explore the essence of equivalence from new perspectives and depths on the basis of the original equivalence ideas. The representative study of this problem is the equivalence view of Г.Р.Гарбовский.

In the mature period of equivalence thought, А.Д.Швейцер once discussed equivalence from the viewpoint of semiotics, and he believed that equivalence could be divided into semantic, pragmatic and syntactic equivalence. Among them, semantic equivalence is an indispensable aspect of equivalence. Semantic equivalence mainly examines the extent to which the translated text is equivalent to or deviates from the original text in terms of meaning. Within the meaning, we are more likely to examine the relationship between the objective world and the original text, the objective world and the translated text, the original text and the translated text. The relationship between these three is precisely based on philosophical semantics thinking about the authenticity of symbols. Based on linguistics and philosophy of language, Garbovsky proposes the relationship between equivalence and truth, equivalence and meaning. He further point out the connotation of equivalence and the important role of the translator's understanding for equivalence through the similarities and differences of several pairs of concepts such as the terms "meaning" (смысл) and "connotation" (значение), the "concept" (понятие) and "understanding" (концепт), "signifier" (денотат) and "signified”(референт)"референт", thus enriching and developing the idea of equivalence in Russian linguistic translation.

According to Гарбовский, "the concept of 'truth-lies' can be introduced from logic as a criterion of equivalence evaluation." Translation equivalence means that the equivalence of the translated text and the original text (ИТ-ПТ) has truth value, if and only if the translated text is equally true as the original text. The truth-value of the original text corresponding to the objective reality is not involved here. The text is true because it has a certain correspondence with the objective reality.

Гарбовский also points out the relationship between meaning and connotation in accordance with Frege's view. Symbols refer to objects and express meaning. Connotation is directly connected with the denomination of the representational object (i.e. signified), while meaning is connected with the information carried by the object. That is, connotation is related to the scope of the concept, while meaning is related to the content of the concept. The relationship between "meaning" and "connotation" suggests that the same object can be expressed by different symbols, and the same original text can be interpreted by different translations. Each translator tries to decode the objective meaning of the original text based on the objective meaning of the symbols.

According to the relationship between the signified and congruent reference of philosophical semantics, the referent indicates the object class of real behavior, which is determined according to the понятие, that is, according to the content; while the congruent reference refers to the concrete thing, which necessarily adds the individual understanding, so it is determined according to the референт. What the congruent reference is converted into through translation may depend more on the perception of the translator, or even the perception of the reader of the target language. Thus Гарбовский suggests that the real meaning of the source language text and the real meaning of the translated text do not coincide exactly. After the author constructs a specific speech system, the translator who cannot understand this speech system well, has to reach the signified(денотат) from the concept (понятие), and then he will choose some from a lot of possible objects for categorical description and treat them as congruent reference. In this way, the mechanism of semantic transformation in translation is constructed from individual, specific to general, and then to new individual.

Reinterpretation of translation shifts problem

Like the problem of equivalence, the problem of translation shift was also one of the main concerns of Russian-Soviet translation theory in the last century. In the Russian-Soviet translation theory, Я.I.Рецкер (1950) has discussed the problem of translation shift in more details. He divided translation shift into lexical shift and grammatical shift, while lexical shift can be divided into seven forms; grammatical shift is also associated with lexical shift, and grammatical shift refers to changing the structure of sentences in translation according to the norms of the target language. After that, А.Д.Швейцер (1988) discussed translation shift from the level of sense-value equivalence. Л.С.Бархударов (1975) classified the shift in the translation process.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian translation theory continued to pay attention to the problem of translation shift, and a representative viewpoint belongs to the discussion of shift by Г.Р.Гарбовский. Г.Р.Гарбовский puts forward the discourse shift (прагматические преобразовния) and discourse-determined shift (прагмат ически обусловленные преобразования). Гарбовский considers discourse conversion and discourse-determined conversion as different concepts. Pragmatic transformation means that the translator consciously changes the communicative effect and aesthetic function sought by the author of the original text. For example, translating poetry into prose and prose into poetry. When the translator believes that it is more important for the reader to understand the content of the original text as exhaustively as possible rather than the form, he often chooses a pragmatic conversion. And the pragmatically determined conversion is aimed at reproducing the communicative effect of the original text in the translated text in equivalent value. Therefore, the translated text often retains the pragmatic meaning of the original, while the syntactic and semantic meaning of the original may be partially or even completely changed. Thus, it can be seen that a pragmatic shift often changes the text as a whole, while a pragmatically determined shift changes only the components of the text. However, whether it is a pragmatic shift or a pragma-determined shift, it is a matter of the translator trying to realize the interpretation of the meaning of one conforming system in another conforming system.

2.3 New perspectives and major trends in translation theory research.

3. Translation ideas of Russian translation theorists from the end of the 20th century to the present.

3.1 Stobnikov's main translation ideas.

3.2 Garbovsky's main translation ideas.

Conclusion

In a word, to study Russian translation theory, it is necessary to understand its history first. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, although there was a brief low period in the translation business in Russia, Russian translation theory has shown a more active development after entering the new century. The contributions of Stobnikov and Garbovsky to the study of Russian translation theory are particularly outstanding. In the last thirty years, both the reinterpretation of traditional problems and the discovery of new perspectives in translation studies have led to a new development of Russian translation theory research in the new century.