安师大自考论文.doc

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Abstract
There are numerous different approaches to good translation. Among all the theories concerning it, the researches on UT (unit of translation) may be the most effective and efficient; or rather the complex process of translation involves various selections, which is reflected through the establishment of unit of translation. Dividing a sentence or a whole text into relatively smaller linguistic units and treat them respectively is the main idea of the theories of UT. Besides, we can even divide author’s thoughts or the circumstance in which the text happens into different parts of a UT. However, according to the prevailing views, we often differentiate UT in the scope of linguistics. Sometimes we consider a morpheme or a phoneme as the smallest UT and can also take the whole text or a paragraph for UT in line with the need of translation. Though the most frequently used UTs are sentence and word, the selection of UT often has such characteristics as dynamic and logic etc. So we should choose different UT in corresponding circumstances. This paper is mainly focused on the theories on unit of translation abroad and at home, Including Barkhudarov, Rado, Nida, New mark, etc. Moreover, it also concerns how to choose and handle UT dynamically and correctly in practical circumstances.
Key word ：unit of translation ； equivalent； sentence； paragraph ； discourse

摘要
我们有着无数不同的方法来翻译出好文章，然而在相关理论中，对于翻译单位的研究也许是最有效率和最有效果的，更确切地说，复杂的翻译过程中包括对原语内容的不同选择，它反映在翻译单位这个概念的建立上。 翻译理论的中心思想就是把译文中的一句句子或整篇文章分成相对小的语言单位并分别处理它们。此外，我们甚至能把作者的思想或者译文的创作环境分成小的翻译单位。然而，根据现在流行的观点，我们常常根据语言学来区分翻译单位，有时我们把语素或者音素看作最小的翻译单位，也能根据翻译的要求，把整篇文章或一个段落看作翻译单位。虽然最常用的翻译单位是句子和单词，但是翻译单位的选择具有动态性和逻辑性等特点.所以应该根据相对应的环境选择不同的翻译单位。这篇论文主要集中阐述了中西方关于翻译单位的见解，包括巴尔胡达罗夫，拉多，奈达，纽玛克，等人。此外，也涉及关于在实际环境中如何去动态和正确地使用动态翻译单位。
关键词 翻译单位；对等；句子；段落； 语篇

Contents

1 INTRODCTION

1.1 Concerned theories of translation

1.2 Translation equivalence

1.3 The function of UT

2 DEFINITIONS AND RELATED ISPUTE

2.1 The definition of UT

2.2 Views on UT abroad

2.3 Views on UT at home

3 BASIC TYPES OF UT IN PRACTICAL USE

3.1 Phoneme, morpheme as UT

3.2 Word as UT

4 OTHER TYPES OF UT IN PRACTICAL USE

4.1 Sentence as UT

4.2 Discourse or text as UT

5 CONCLUSIONS

Bibliography

A study on dynamic unit of translation
1 INRODUCTION

1.1 Literature review

Almost everything existing in the world, to some extent, can be measured in terms of quantity or quality. In the same way, when we come to scientific research, we can divide the object, whether it’s tangible or not, into smaller parts and study them respectively, which not only relieves us of pressure but also does contribution to the accuracy of the results.
Theoretically, translation is a procedure in which communication is made and information is exchanged between different languages, or rather, consists in reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source language message (Eugene A. Nida). Practically, it is a transformation between different language codes and it is always finished in terms of transformation of some units of the languages themselves. Naturally, questions on how to define these units and how to classify them are brought up. Therefore, studies on unit of translation (we will use its acronym in the following) are the threshold of practical application of theories of translation. But UT is a hard nut to crack. Without solving this problem, no research in translation studies will ever be sufficient. To date, very few people have focused their research on this area. In this paper, some concepts of UT will be introduced.When considering UT, we should have some idea of the translation equivalence. In translation studies, the issue of UT is frequently raised in conjunction with that of translation equivalence. As Sager (1994: 222) puts it, both “lie at the heart of any theoretical or practical discussion about translation.” This is because theorists, consciously or subconsciously, take the UT as a compartment in which what they believe to be “translation equivalence” materializes. As two theoretical concepts, however, they should be regarded distinct from each other. The notion of translation equivalence, which “implies that complete equivalence is an achievable goal” (Hatim and Mason 1990: 8), is indicative of a belief in the existence of an “absolute” meaning or identity (cf. Eoyang 1993: 14-15). The other type of comparison is between the illocutionary meanings derived (ideally) in the same process of reading of the texts by the same reader; thus for the translator or critic, the “one person par excellence [...], at least briefly, ST [source text] and TT [target text] are not separated but on the contrary are simultaneously present and intimately interconnected in his or her mind” (Harris cited in Toury 1995: 96). Viewing the UT as a language level on which translation equivalence is to be established is, therefore, a misguided conception based on three unwarranted beliefs: (a) a UT is a formal unit in nature and can be treated in isolation; (b) language units are automatic UTs; and (c) complete equivalence is achievable. To restore the concept of UT to its true functional status, it is of vital importance to keep the UT and translation equivalence as two separate notions. Then, the UT will not be invalidated on the grounds of the implausibility of translation equivalence, so long as the application of the UT does not base itself on the purported “absolute meaning” or formal identity in theory and seeks nothing of the kind in practice.

1.2 The significance of the research

Then, we should learn how UT does contribution to translation. Put in a down-to-earth manner, good translating, like good writing, comes from the right choice of words and word order. The only difference is that in translating, this “right choice” is prompted and at the same time restricted by the existing SL text as well as by the resources available in the target language. This “rightness,” or appropriateness, has attracted the attention of translation theorists and practitioners for centuries. In dealing with this dilemma, however, they have encountered another problem of “rightness”: deciding what length of discourse can most propitiously serve as a unit of practice and analysis. This has been a core issue underlying the concept of UT, a concept that is both “a concrete reflection of the age-old conflict between free and literal translation” (New mark 1988: 54), and “a basis for a scientific approach to translation” (Snell-Horn by 1990: 81). This is also where disagreement starts, rendering the notion of UT of hardly any assistance to translators in practice (New mark 1981: 140 and 1988: 54) until key issues such as criteria, linguistic basis, and form and content, can be clarified (Barkhudarov 1993).

1.3 The structure of the thesis

2 DEFINITION AND RELATED DISPUTES

2.1 The definition of UT

However, what on earth is UT? It is hard to answer. Some tend to believe it is based on mental unit, while others hold the view that it is based on the tangible language unit in translation practices. But problems are raised in whether we should find the corresponding unit in TL according to the language unit in SL or find the corresponding unit in SL according to the language unit in TL. We study UT in a limited way and can’t get rid of the traditional thinking burden. What does contribution to the situation? Firstly, translation itself is an integrated and consistent procedure. Though language can be classified into smaller units, the transformation between different languages is seen as a whole and can’t be classified into concrete language units. Second, UT is dynamic but a static form. So the classification of UT is influenced by the style, genre of the text even the characteristics of the author. Consequently, recent explanations of translation unit are merely focused on its dynamic characteristic. Here we explain UT in a way that will mostly facilitate translation and benefit translator. We can define UT as a unit in TL to which a corresponding equivalent can be found in SL. You may feel puzzled about this definition. We can take moving house as an example. Suppose you are moving home, what torment you most must be some trivial stuffs. Generally speaking, stuffs with big volume can be removed one by one and those with smaller volume can be put into a box to be removed later. We won’t take apart a piano because it is an integer. While book-self is on the contrary, books on it can be took down and put into boxes respectively, even the book-self itself can be disconnected. UT is something of removing home. Sometimes a sentence can be decompounded to suit for the translation and sometimes it must be seen as an integer or even some sentences must be seen as a group in which these sentences can be adjusted randomly because they are seen as a UT.UT can be small as well as big .if we group some sentences, it become big .while it can also be small. For example, when we translation the name of certain place, we are inclining to make it close to the voice of SL as much as possible. Like Los Angeles translated into “洛杉矶”, we see phoneme as UT. However, this only do sometimes, generally speaking, it is difficult to choose a suitable UT to make translation perfect. Lager UT can spare a bigger room to translators to adjust in TL in a freer way. Though smaller UT bears a closer meaning to TL in structure, translator may be inevitably limited by SL.

2.2 A general views on UT

So let’s browse through how experts express their ideas on UT. There exist three main different views on UT, viz. logic, semantic, discourse analysis. And the view to see text or discourse as UT is prevailing these years.
Among the dispute, some consider a sentence or a phrase as a UT; while others protest paragraph or discourse should be seen as a UT. To review the theory of UT by some of the most innovative theorists in this field—Barkhudarov ,Vinay and Darbelnet, Nida , Catford, and These theorists have studied UT in relation to the translation process, using different approaches, and have provided fruitful ideas for further study on this topic.

2.1.1 Views on UT abroad

In talking about the UT of word and text, Nida held that the unit should be the sentence, and in a certain sense, the discourse. He wrote: .average person naively thinks that language is words, the common tacit assumption results that translation involves replacing a word in language A with a word in language B. And the more “conscientious” this sort of translation is, the more acute. In other words, the traditional focus of attention in translation was on the word. It was recognized that that was not a sufficiently large unit, and therefore the focus shifted to the sentence. But again, expert translators and linguists have been able to demonstrate that individual sentences, in turn, are not enough. The focus should be on the paragraph, and to some extent on the total discourse. (Nida and Tabber 1969: 152)From that statement we can see that Nida regards a discourse as something larger than a paragraph, as an article with a beginning and an ending. Nida himself never applied text linguistics to translation, and there might be some confusion if we use his term in our interpretation of discourse, because discourse analysis is not merely a study based on a larger language structure.
Barkhudarov (1993: 40), Soviet linguist and translation theorist, suggests that: translation is the process of transforming a speech product (or text) produced in one language into a speech product (or text) in another language. [...] It follows that the most important task of the translator who carries out the process of transformation, and of the theorist who describes or creates a model for that process, is to establish the minimal unit of translation, as it is generally called, the unit of translation in the source text, which may include phoneme or written form, morpheme, word, phrase, sentence, and discourse. Though he notes the importance of the unit of translation in a text and considers that this unit can be a unit on any level of language, he fails to point out what a text is and how it might be measured in translation.
Holliday’s notion of the clause might be significant in this case. To him, a clause is a basic unit. He distinguishes three functions of a clause: textual, interpersonal and ideational. According to Holliday, these functions are not possessed by word or phrase. But he is not quite successful in analyzing the relationship between clause and text (cf. Holliday 1985).
Vinay and Darbelnet，in their <>, pointed out UT is a unit at the level of word that can express author’s thoughts. It’s the minimum fragment in which every sign is combined so concentrated that it can not be separated in narration. Though this definition is still influenced by structural school and is confined in word among language units, they pointed out the deeper element, the thought. According to their view, the unit of thought and the unit of word are in accordance with UT, which pioneers a new field in the definition of UT.
Rado, another famous theorist, prompted loge me as UT. According to his definition, loge me is the element which is extracted from the original text and reproduced in translated text in the period of translating. To translator, Loge me is a tool used to do research. Every loge me is sustained by certain logic cause and it is dynamic and difficult to handle.
Cat ford, following Holliday, proposes a systemic hierarchy of five units for consideration in translating. They are, in descending order, the sentence, clause, group, word and morpheme (Cat ford 1965: 8).
New mark, while maintaining that “free translation has always favored the sentence; literal translation the word,” has observed that with text linguistics, free translation has moved to the whole text, i.e., to regarding the whole text as the UT, and has given rise to a confusing tendency” (New mark 1988:54) .His schema of hierarchical ranking, in consequence, ranges from the complete text, to the paragraph, sentence, clause, word group, word, morpheme and punctuation marks (New mark 1988: 9), while a later version (New mark 1988: 65-66) excludes punctuation marks but includes the collocation, which is, in turn, left out in a still later system of “main descriptive units” (New mark 1991: 66). His theory can describe as the figure below.

The classification of discourse
Main content
Translation method
Unit of translation
Expressive function
Literature, authoritat