In Defense of Schleiermacher: A Critique of Venuti's Foreignization and Domestication

試析韋努蒂關於施萊爾馬翻譯理論的系譜學論述

鄭永康(Carlos G. Tee)

《翻譯學研究集刊》 19輯 (2015/12) Pp. 141-154

摘要

普魯斯詮釋學家施萊爾馬赫(Friedrich Schleiermacher)於一八一三年主張異化翻譯策略，即在譯文中保留外國文本中之語言與文化差異。韋努蒂在Genealogies of Translation Theory: Schleiermacher 和The Translator’s Invisibility 二著中表示贊同異化策略，並相對批評所謂通順的歸化翻譯策略。韋努蒂更進一步批判英美文化利用歸化翻譯理論實質進行文化侵吞和霸權主義。然而韋努蒂的系譜學過度引用傅柯的批判手段，使之失去客觀性。本文之研究目的即在探討韋努蒂系譜學論述中與施萊爾馬赫原論述間之落差，並指出他如何背離施萊爾馬赫原先的觀點和本意。本文探討重點包括: (1)施萊爾馬赫推動異化策略時為何主張以普魯斯上流社會為起點(2)詮釋外國文本時兼顧文本和原作者個人創作心理學之正當性(3)歸化與異化策略在同一篇譯本中互不排除(4)韋努蒂系譜學極度偏愛意識形態造成他相關論述失去平衡與客觀性。

關鍵字

韋努蒂 ； 施萊爾馬赫 ； 歸化與異化策略 ； 傅柯 ； 系譜學

並列摘要

Lawrence Venuti’s discourse on domesticating and foreignizing translation harks back some two hundred years ago to a speech by the Prussian hermeneutician Friedrich Schleiermacher. This paper is a critique of Venuti’s genealogies of Schleiermacher’s original ideas on translation. Discussion focuses on several major issues. Venuti’s discourse, swayed by his Post-colonialist emphasis on Foucaultian genealogies, laments Schleiermacher’s choice of the educated class in pushing for the formation of a new national culture as “elitist”. Considering the condition of Prussia two centuries ago, this paper argues that Schleiemacher’s proposed approach was the right course of action. Any social movement of the literary and cultural kind has to begin somewhere from the upper classes, from where the ideas spread to the general public. It is in the periphery of the semiosphere where strain leads to dynamism, and it is where the hotspot of real action is, as Yuri Lotman would assert. Venuti writes at length to expound on his dislike for the textual and psychological requirements for interpretation as proposed by Schleiermacher. For Schleiermacher, the relationship between the grammatical and the psychological is not static but rather dynamic since each one cannot lead to a complete understanding, and therefore, it is necessary to move back and forth between the two sides in an endless process of comparison and contrasting before the reader eventually arrives at a definite interpretation. While Schleiermacher’s psychological mode faced criticisms from some hermeneuticians, none of his critics, including Hans-Georg Gadamer, really upheld semantic autonomy in textual exegesis in an absolutist manner. Rather, they believed that author’s intention can be a subject of interpretation in certain cases but the text has far more weight than authorial intention in interpretation. Venuti generally views domestication and foreignization as two extreme poles, and never explains the binarism as a range that could simultaneously apply in relative degrees in translating any given text. Instead, he writes in absolutist terms in his treatment of the pair. Through a discussion of how Schleiermacher rejected an overtly foreignizing translation of the Greek classics, it was established that in actual practice, Schleiermacher took foreignization and domestication not as mutually exclusive extremes but that they could instead coexist in the same text. In Venuti’s two genealogies on Schleiermacher, ideologically charged qualifiers and terminologies pepper the pages of his discourses such that that they effectively eclipse the real linguistic and cultural agenda of Schleiermacher. Indeed, the genealogist in Venuti sees ideology where there is none. Venuti’s discourse is as ideological as his agenda is and with that as a point of departure, his treatment of Schleiermacher appears strongly tainted. His Foucaultian genealogies, teleologically speaking, are virtually a manipulation of theory.

並列關鍵字

domesticating and foreignizing translation ； Venuti ； Schleiermacher ； genealogies ； Foucault

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