中国作家协会主管

翻译是沟通

翻译是跨文化交际

首先，沟通涉及听众和说话人的意图两个要素。没有听众，交流不会发生。同样地，说话人的意图如果不被理解，沟通就算失败。因此，明白翻译的目标群体是谁，并且确保说话人的意图得到有效传递，这一点至关重要。

“听众设计”的概念由新西兰社会语言学家艾伦·贝尔在其文章《语言风格为听众而设计》中首次提出，该文章于1984年出版后，产生极大的影响力。根据艾伦·贝尔的说法，人们讲话的时候主要是回应其他人，而讲话人会因听众不同而设计他们的演讲风格。艾伦·贝尔将听众分为四种类型：1）受话者，是讲话人了解的直接目的听众；2）旁听者指在场但未被直接指定为目的听众的人；3）无意识听众，、指的是在话语范围内但并未被指定或认可的听众，如在同一辆公共汽车上的乘客；4）窃听者指的是不知是否在场的听众，如读者或电视听众。

说话者有责任确定他的听众类型，然后相应地设计他的话语。否则，沟通就会受阻甚至造成沟通灾难（下文将举例说明）。

因此翻译就像第一个讲话人一样，需要知道他的听众是谁，并相应地做出回应。这是确保翻译作为沟通发生的主要条件之一。

翻译不一定会带来沟通，沟通不是事先给定的。那么沟通是如何发生的？据Sperber和Wilson（1995）的观点，人类沟通涉及“表达”和“意图认知”。意图的认知依赖于上下文来阐明作者想要表达的信息，而这里的上下文是指能够实现阐述过程的认知环境。所以认为信息一旦表达出来，就可以传达给所有听众，且不用考虑他们的认知环境，这种看法根本就是错误的。

此外，听众的观念和理解受到各自语言和文化的约束和限制。因此，翻译时源语言听众的认知和文化背景与目的语听众不一致，翻译人员需要确定不匹配或缺失的语境，并为其目的语听众提供一种认知环境，使其能够获取和源语言受众一样的信息。

例如，“癞蛤蟆想吃天鹅肉”。中国听众了解这句俗语的文化和认知背景，知道是取自一个蟾蜍和天鹅的寓言，但是英语听众缺少这样的语境，不能理解蟾蜍和天鹅之间的特殊关系。在这种语境之下，我将其翻译为：“Just as a toad craves for swan meat, an ugly man gets a pretty girl.（就像蟾蜍渴望天鹅肉一样，丑陋的男人也想得到漂亮的女孩）”。如此便为英语听众添加了一种认知文化背景，以便解释这个中国俗语。

另一个例子是 “男人四十一支花”。这句话中暗含的语境对于中国听众来说是已知的，但对于英语听众来说是是缺失的。40岁的男人不仅仅是一朵花，而是一朵盛开的花朵。所以应该翻译成“A man at 40 is a like a flower in full bloom.（40岁的男人就像一朵盛开的花。）” 

翻译语言就是翻译文化。翻译人员必须具备一定的知识和技能，识别并翻译源语言文本中隐藏的和无形的认知和文化语境，以便目的语听众理解。

根据上述内容，我们可以得出结论，两种语言和文化不存在同一性。翻译过程中如果要寻找对等时，我们需要明白不存在无差异的对等，而且对等不等于复制。拿一个看似简单的例子来说，走路时有些人的脚习惯向外转，有的则会向内转。这种情况用中文描述是外八字和内八字。中文最初是属于表意语言，是一种象形文字。而英文对应的词语分别是“鸭脚”和“鸽脚”，画面感十足。所以我们可以说，虽然表达的是同一个意思，但是中文表达更客观，英文表达更“多彩”。如果把中文“你走路是外八字脚”翻译成英语“When you walked, you had duck feet（你走路时的脚是鸭脚）”，虽然指的是同一个行为，但英语读者感受到的和中文听众感受到的有很大不同。

另一个有趣的例子是“备胎”。备胎在中英文中都是指汽车携带的备用轮胎，用于不时之需。但是备胎在英文中还有另一个含义，即“人腰部周围的一圈脂肪”，因为腰部脂肪和轮胎很像。同样，备胎在中文也有另外一层引申含义，即“备份的男朋友或女朋友”。所以 “你有备胎吗”这个问题对中文读者和英文读者来说可能意味着完全不一样的东西。

为了实现翻译上的跨文化交际，需要熟练掌握基于跨文化和语际翻译的处理技巧。 “你要没有树挂住，就挂了”，这句话按字面翻译是“If you weren’t caught by a tree, you’d be dead（如果你没有被树挂住，你会死）”，然而， 这样“挂”的双关用法就会丧失，幽默效果荡然无存。在中文，第一个“挂”是正式的表达，意思是“被抓住”。第二个“挂”是俚语，是 “死”的幽默表达。但英文中“被抓住”和“死亡”显然不是同音异义，无法像中文表达那样达到幽默的效果。所以我想出了英文中的另一同义词表达同样的效果：“If you missed, you’d be missed（如果你错过了，你就死了）。”

将中国文化译入英文的会面对各种语言学方面的挑战，其中涉及同音异义的例子是“无法(发)无天”。 “头发”一词被发音为“fa”，听起来和中文“法”一样。英文中的“头发”一词更是与“法律”八竿子打不着。但是，如果我将无发翻译成“bald（秃头）”，将无法的含义扩展为“bold（大胆）”，最后译文就是“You’re the boldest baldie I’ve ever met（你是我见过的最大胆的秃头）”。

有时候只是要找到正确的关键词来填补两种语言间的差距，就像这句话“你要敢死，他就敢埋”中的明确性和幽默感体现在“spare（放弃，留出）”一词上，如：“If you can spare your life, he’ll spare you a burial（如果你不要命，他就埋了你）”。

同样，翻译中的文化挑战也十分有趣。我们知道，假定讲话人和听众具有一致的知识是幽默的关键，所以源语种的参考信息通常被故意舍弃或隐藏，如“失敬，失敬，原来是蔡公公”这句话 。中文里“爷爷或祖父”可以称为“爷爷”或“公公”，但“公公”还有另外一重含义是太监的尊称。如果“蔡公公”译成“蔡爷爷”，就缺少了幽默的意味；而如果译成“蔡太监”，那就不免有些粗俗无礼，幽默感也同样没有了。在这种情况下就需要将潜藏的信息放到台前，所以翻译成：“My respects. So you served an empress in court（尊敬的大人，您在宫里服侍皇后）”。

再举个类似的例子：我还有一个标签就是“拆二代”。在中国，如果居民因国家项目建设如建造奥林匹克公园而被迫搬家时，他们会得到大量金钱补偿，一夜暴富。所以如果有人称你为“拆二代”，那就意味着你是一个富有的孩子。所以翻译这类句子时需要展现出相关背景信息，好比这个译文“I’m also known as ‘a kid whose parents got a payout when their house was demolished’（我也被称为‘在房屋被拆时得到赔偿的人的孩子）’。

有时候源语言中的隐喻需要替换成目的语中的另一个隐喻，以便将潜在信息传达给目的语受众。例如“吃黄豆了吧”。烤黄豆是中国饮食中一种常见的小吃，吃了容易使人放屁。所以中国人说“你吃了黄豆吗？”意思就是问“你放屁了吗？”但是英文 “你吃黄豆了吗？”和“你放屁了么？”有很大不同，但冗长的解释不能解决问题，而且会让表达不够自然。我的解决办法就是将“Did you eat soybeans（你吃大豆吗）？”改为“An upset stomach（你胃不舒服）？”。 

最后，我想说翻译不是照镜子，而是再创造的过程。翻译后的译文是全新的文本，有自己的生命，同时为我们看待原文开辟了新的视角。

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, 癞蛤蟆想吃天鹅肉 – “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 内八字 , 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你走路是外八字脚 (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, 你要没让树挂住，就挂了, 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无法(发)无天  – 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 无发 “no hair” into “bald”, I can extend the expression无法 “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，原来是蔡公公 – “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: 我还有一个标签就是“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, 吃黄豆了吧 – “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.