Essay on the principles of translation 泰勒的翻译三原则

Essay on the principles of translation 泰勒的翻译三原则 Essay on the principles of translation Alexander Fraser Tytler Lord Woodhouselee First Edition, 1791 The impulse for the essay certainly does not seem to have come from any preoccupation with theoretical statements about the translation process, for Tytler appears to have had a rather spotty and accidental knowledge of that tradition. Instead, he seems to have been moved to write on translation by reading, in his voracious but rather unsystematic manner, a wide variety of literature in the original and translation, and by his own efforts as a translator of Petrarch and Schiller. Third Edition, 1813 Tytler had, too, become somewhat more overt about his philosophical foundations, claiming for the first time that his principles were “founded in nature and huaman sense”. He notes that what he feels to be a lack of decent commentary on the process translation, even among the ancient authors. Tytler’s approach is that of the antiquarian, reading whatever comes readily to hand, rather than that of te though scholar seeking copiousness. There was before him no treatise that discussed at length the problems of and solutions to the translation dilemma and the more interesting od the explicit statements on the questions scattered about in the introductions to the various translations. While such has been our ignorance of the principles of this art, it is not at all wonderful, that a midst the numberless translation which everyday appear, both of the works of the ancients and the moderns, there should be so few that are possessed of real merit. The utility of translations is universally felt, and therefore there is a continual demand for them. But this very circumstance has thrown the practice of translation into mean and mercenary hands.(7-8) General law of translation It is the duty of a translator to attend only to the sense and spirit of his original, to make himself perfectly master of his author’s ideas, and to communicative them in those expressions which he judges to be best suited to convey them. It has, on the other hand, been maintained, that, in order to constitute a perfect translation, it is not only requisite that the ideas and sentiments of the original author should be conveyed, but likewise his style and manner of writing, which, it is supposed, cannot be done with a strict attention to the arrangement of his sentences, and even to their order and construction. According to the former idea of translation, it is allowable to improve and to embellish; according to the latter, it is necessary to preserve even blemishes and defects; and to these must likewise be superadded the harshness that must attend every copy in which the artist scrupulously studies to imitate the minutest lines or traces of his original. (14-15) Tytler claims to choose a middle position. He then supplies a characterization of what he considers a good translation to be: that. In which the merit of the original work is so completely transfused into another language, as to be distinctly apprehended, and as strongly felt, by a native of the country to which that language belongs, as it is by those who speak the language of the original work. (15-16) Three general law: 1) That the translation should give a complete transcript of the ideas of the original work. 2) That the style and manner of writing should be of the same character with that of the original. 3) That the translation should have all the ease of the original composition. The translator’s privilege to alter the original The issue to which Tytler devotes the majority of his discussion and the one for which many reviewers took him to task is the question of the translator’s liberty to add to, delete from, or in other ways alter the character of his original. Suppression is deemed proper when there is a careless inaccurate expression of the original, where that inaccuracy seems materially affect the sense. (54) and when something offends against the dignity of the native. (55) “An ordinary translator sinks under the energy of his original: of man of genius (42) frequently rises above it” Evaluation and Conclusion As a result, we cannot expect to find his principles set into a fully articulated general framework, whether rhetorical or linguistic. In another way, however, the essay is a modern book, for we find in it no slavish adherence to a classical theory or ancient authority, nor is there a mere categorization on the model of the encyclopedia. Tytler seems to have felt no need to discover a tradition, a usable past which must be assumed as a foundation for a workable present.