Hermeneutics and Translation Theory.pdf

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Iranian Translators Cyber Association Articleslanguage comes to humans with meaning, interpretations and understandings of the world cannever be prejudice-free. As human beings, one cannot step outside of language and look atlanguage or the world from some objective standpoint. Language is not a tool which humanbeings manipulate to represent a meaning-full world; rather, language forms human reality.(quoted from Bullock, 1997)Another important figure in this sphere is Schleiermacher whose concept of understandingincludes empathy as well as intuitive linguistic analysis. He believed that understanding is notmerely the decoding of encoded information, interpretation is built upon understanding, and ithas a grammatical, as well as a psychological moment. The grammatical thrust places the textwithin a particular literature (or language) and reciprocally uses the text to redefine the characterof that literature. The psychological thrust is more naive and linear. In it, the interpreterreconstructs and explicates the subject's motives and implicit assumptions. Thus Schleiermacherclaimed that a successful interpreter could understand the author as well, as or even better than,the author understood himself because the interpretation highlights hidden motives andstrategies. (quoted from the web: www.ai.mit.edu)Dilthey, initially a follower of Schleiermacher, went further. He began to emphasize that textsand actions were as much products of their times as expressions of individuals, and theirmeanings were consequently constrained by both an orientation to values of their period and aplace in the web of their authors' plans and experiences. Therefore meanings are delineated bythe author's world-view reflecting a historical period and social context. Understanding(verstehen), the basis for methodological hermeneutics, involves tracing a circle from text to theauthor's biography and immediate historical circumstances and back again. Interpretation, or thesystematic application of understanding to the text, reconstructs the world in which the text wasproduced and places the text in that world. (ibid)Modern ideas on hermeneutics hold that the writer may be an editor or a redactor and that hemay have used sources. In considering this aspect of discourse one must take into account thewriter's purpose in writing as well as his cultural milieu. Secondly, one must consider thenarrator in the writing who is usually different from the writer. Sometimes he is a real person,2
sometimes fictional. One must determine his purpose in speaking and his cultural milieu, takinginto consideration the fact that he may be omnipresent and omniscient. One must also take intoconsideration the narratee within the story and how he hears. But even then one is not finished.One must reckon with the person or persons to whom the writing is addressed; the reader, notalways the same as the one to whom the writing is addressed; and later readers. Thirdly, onemust consider the setting of writing, the genre (whether poetry, narrative, prophecy, etc.), thefigures of speech; the devices used, and, finally, the plot. (Hanko, 1991)Following the above ideas, we realize that understanding and interpreting the meaning of adiscourse involves actually three factors: the author (writer), the text (or speech) and the reader.My Understanding of TranslationTranslation, according to Nida (1984) consists in reproducing in the receptor language the closestnatural equivalent of the source language massage, first in terms of meaning and secondly interms of style. The Chinese cihai (unabridged dictionary) defines translation as: expressing inanother language the meaning carried in the original language (my translation from Chinese).Here meaning is apparently in the limelight of translation, which is why adequate understandingand interpretation is always an iron criterion in judging whether a piece of translation succeedsor fails. Style is another indispensable factor involved in translation but cannot be treated in thispaper for it is not directly relevant to the present topic.I believe however meaning is never concrete and tangible as many may claim and translation ofmeaning can only achieve a sort of approximation instead of exactness as is believed by somescholars working in the field. I reckon that when the translated meaning produces the same or asimilar response in the target reader or listener as it does the original reader, the translation issuccessful by my standard. Newmark (1982) says that it is preferable to handle the issue in termsof equivalence of intended effects, thus linking judgments about what the translator seeks toachieve to judgments about the intended meaning of the ST speaker/writer. In other words I donot seek to reproduce the exactness of the original but always bear in my mind the rule of havingthe same effect on the target reader. This assertion is grounded on the fact that it is believed by3
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