-
1
Roman Jakobson
(1959)
On linguistic Aspects of
Translation
According
to
Bertrand
Russell,
“no
one
can
understand
the
word
?cheese?
unless he has a nonlinguistic
acquaintance with cheese.”
1
If, however, we follow
Russell?s
fundamental
precept
教训，告诫
and
pla
ce
our
“emphasis
upon
the
linguistic
aspects
of
traditional
philosophical
problems,”
then
we
are
obliged
to
state
that no one can understand the word “cheese”
unless he has an acquaintance
with
the
meaning
assigned
to
this
word
in
the
lexical
code
of
English.
Any
representative
of
a
cheese-less
culinary
厨房的，烹调的
culture
will
understand
the English word
“cheese” if he is aware that in this language it
means “food made
of pressed
curds
凝乳
” and if he has at
least a linguistic acquaintance with “curds.”
We
never
consumed
ambrosia
特别美味的，神的食物
or
nectar
花蜜
and
have
only a
linguistic acquaintance with the words “ambrosia,”
“nectar,” and “gods”
-
the
name
of
their
mythical
users;
nonetheless,
we
understand
these
words
and
know in
what contexts each of them may be used.
（人们对词义的理解，进而也
是对整个语言含义的理解，而并非取决于人们的生活经验以
及对世界的认
识，而首先取决于语言本身，取决于对语言的翻译。只要理解了人们赋予词
语的意义，也就理解了语言。）
The meaning of the words “cheese,”
“apple,” “nectar,” “acquaintance,” “but,”
“mere,” and of any word or phrase
whatsoever is definitely a linguistic
-
or to be
more precise and less narrow -
a semiotic fact. Against those who assign meaning
(signatum
非感官性的记号义
) not to the sign, but to the thing itself, the
simplest
and truest argument would be
that nobody has ever smelled or tasted the meaning
of “cheese” or of “apple.” There is no
signatum without signum. The meaning of
the
word
“cheese”
cannot
be
inferred
from
a
nonlinguistic
acquaintance
with
cheddar or with
camembert
一种乳酪
without the
assistance of the verbal code. An
array
排列
of
linguistic
signs
is
needed
to
introduce
an
unfamiliar
word.
Mere
pointing will not teach
us whether “cheese” is the name of the
given specimen
样
本
,
or of any box of camembert, or of camembert in
general or of any cheese, any
milk
product, any food, any
refreshment
点心
, or perhaps
any box irrespective of
contents.
Finally, does a word simply name the thing in
question, or does it imply a
meaning
such as offering, sale, prohibition, or
malediction? (Pointing actually may
mean
malediction
诅咒
; in some
cultures, particularly in Africa, it is an ominous
不祥的
gesture.)
2
For
us,
both
as
linguists
and
as
ordinary
word-users,
the
meaning
of
any
linguistic sign is its
translation into some further, alternative sign,
especially a sign
“in
which
it
is
more
fully
developed”
as
Peirce,
the
deepest
inquirer
into
the
essence
of signs, insistently
stated.
2
The term
“bachelor” may be converted into a
more
explicit
designation,
“unmarried
man,”
whenever
higher
explicitness
is
required.
We
distinguish
three
ways
of
interpreting
a
verbal
sign:
it
may
be
translated
into
other
signs
of
the
same
language,
into
another
language,
or
into
another,
nonverbal system of symbols. These three kinds of
translation are to be
differently
labeled:
1
Intralingual translation or rewording
is an interpretation of verbal signs by
means of other signs of the
same language.
2
Interlingual
translation
or
translation
proper
is
an
interpretation
of
verbal
signs by means of
some other language
.
3
Intersemiotic translation
or transmutation is an interpretation of verbal
signs
by means of
signs of
nonverbal sign systems
.
The
intralingual
translation
of
a
word
uses
either
another,
more
or
less
synonymous, word or
resorts to a
circumlocution
委婉曲折的说法
. Yet
synonymy,
as
a
rule,
is
not
complete
equivalence:
for
example,
“every
celibate
独身者
is
a
bachelor,
but not every bachelor is a celibate.” A word or
an idi
omatic phrase-word,
briefly a code-unit of the highest
level, may be fully interpreted only by means of
an equivalent combination of code-
units, i.e., a message referring to this code-
unit:
“every bachelor is an unmarried
man, and every unmarried man is a bachelor,” or
“every celibate is bound not to marry,
and everyone who is bound not to marry is a
celibate.”
Likewise,
on
the
level
of
interlingual
translation,
there
is
ordinarily
no
full
equivalence
between
code-units,
while
messages
may
serve
as
adequate
interpretations of
alien code-
units or messages. The
English word “cheese” cannot
be
completely
identified
with
its
standard
Russian
heteronym
同形异意
“сыр,”
because cottage
cheese is a cheese but not a
сыр
. Russians say:
принеси
сыру
и
творогу
“bring
cheese
and
[sic]
cottage
cheese.”
In
standard
Russian,
the
food
made of
pressed curds is called
сыр
only if ferment is used.
Most
frequently,
however,
translation
from
one
language
into
another
substitutes
messages
in
one
language
not
for
separate
code-units
but
for
entire
messages
in
same
other
language.
Such
a
translation
is
a
reported
speech;
the
3
translator
recodes
and
transmits
a
message
received
from
another
source.
Thus
translation involves two equivalent
messages in two different codes.
Equivalence in difference is the
cardinal
主要的
problem of
language and the
pivotal
关键的
concern
of
linguistics.
Like
any
receiver
of
verbal
messages,
the
linguist acts as their
interpreter. No linguistic specimen may be
interpreted by the
science of language
without a translation of its signs into other
signs of the same
system or into signs
of another system. Any comparison of two languages
implies
an examination of their mutual
translatability; widespread practice of
interlingual
communication,
particularly
translating
activities,
must
be
kept
under
constant
scrutiny
审查
by
linguistic science. It is difficult to
overestimate the urgent need
for
and
the
theoretical
and
practical
significance
of
differential
bilingual
dictionaries
with
careful
comparative
definition
of
all
the
corresponding
units
in
their
intention
and
extension.
Likewise,
differential
bilingual
grammars
should
define what unifies and what
differentiates the two languages in their
selection and
delimitation
界定
of grammatical concepts.
Both the practice and the
theory of translation abound with intricacies, and
from
time to time attempts are made to
sever
分开
the Gordian knot by
proclaiming the
dogma
教条
of
untranslatability.
“Mr.
Everyman,
the
natural
logician,”
vividly
imagined
by
B.
L.
Whorf,
is
supposed
to
have
arrived
at
the
following
bit
of
reasoning: “Fac
ts are unlike
to speakers whose language background provides for
unlike formulation of
them.”
3
In the first years
of the Russian revolution there were
fanatic
狂热的
visionaries who argued in Soviet periodicals for a
radical revision
of
traditional
language
and
particularly
for
the
weeding
out
of
such
misleading
expressions
as
“sunrise”
or
“sunset.”
Yet
we
still
use
this
Ptolemaic
imagery
without implying a rejection of
Copernican
哥白尼的
doctrine, and
we can easily
transform our customary
talk about the rising and setting sun into a
picture of the
earth?s
rotation
simply
because
any
sign
is
translatable
into
a
sign
in
which
it
appears to us more fully developed and
precise.
A faculty of
speaking a given language implies a faculty of
talking about this
language.
Su
ch
a
“metalinguistic”
operation
permits
revision
and
redefinition
of
the
vocabulary
used.
The
complementarity
of
both
levels
-
object-language
and
metalanguage
-
was
brought
out
by
Niels
Bohr:
all
well-defined
experimental
evidence
must
be expressed in
ord
inary
language,
“in
which the practical use
of
every word stands in
complementary relation to attempts of its strict
definition.”4
4
All
cognitive
experience
and
its
classification
is
conveyable
in
any
existing
language.
Whenever
there
is
deficiency,
terminology
may
be
qualified
and
amplified by loan-words
or loan-translations,
neologisms
新词
or semantic
shifts,
and
finally,
by
circumlocutions
迂回累赘的陈述
.
Thus
in
the
newborn
literary
language
of
the
Northeast
Siberian
Chukchees,
“screw”
is
rendered
as
“rotating
nail,”
“steel”
as
“hard
iron,”
“tin”
as
“thin
iron,”
“chalk”
as
“writing
soap,”
“watch”
as
“hammering
heart.”
Even
seemingly
contradictory
circumlocutions,
like
“electrical
horse
-
ear”
(электрическая
конка
),
the
first
Russian
name
of
the
horseless street ear, or “flying
steamship”
(jena paragot), the Koryak
term for the
airplane, simply
designate the
electrical
analogue
of
the
horse-ear
and
the
flying
analogue
of
the
steamer
and
do
not
impede
communication,
just
as
there
is
no
semantic
“noise”
and
disturbance
in
the
double
oxymoron
矛盾修饰法
-
“cold
beef-
and-
pork hot dog.”
No
lack
of
grammatical
device
in
the
language
translated
into
makes
impossible a literal translation of the
entire conceptual information contained in the
original. The traditional conjunctions
“and,” “or” are now supplemented by a new
connective
-
“and/or”
-
which
was
discussed
a
few
years
ago
in
the
witty
book
Federal
Prose
-
How
to
Write
in
and/or
for
Washington.
5
Of
these
three
conjunctions,
only
the
latter
occurs
in
one
of
the
Samoyed
languages.
6
Despite
these differences in
the inventory of conjunctions, all three varieties
of messages
observed
in
“federal
prose”
may
be
distinctly
translated
both
into
tradition
al
English
and
into
this
Samoyed
萨摩耶德
language.
Federal
prose:
1)
John
and
Peter,
2)
John
or
Peter,
3)
John
and/
or
Peter
will
come.
Traditional
English:
3)
John
and Peter or one of them will come. Samoyed: John
and/ or Peter both will
come, 2) John
and/ or Peter, one of them will come.
If some grammatical category is absent
in a given language, its meaning may
be
translated into this language by lexical
means. Dual
对偶形式
forms like Old
Russian
брата
are
translated
with
the
help
of
the
numeral:
“two
brothers.”
It
is
more difficult to remain faithful to
the original when we translate into a language
provided
with
a
certain
grammatical
category
from
a
language
devoid
of
such
a
category. When translating the English
sentence “She has brothers” into a language
which
discriminates
dual
and
plural,
we
are
compelled
either
to
make
our
own
choice
between two statements “She has two brothers”
–
“She has more than two”
or to leave
the decision to
the listener and say: “She has either two or more
than
two brothers.” Again in
translating from a language without grammatical
number
into
English
one
is
obliged
to
select
one
of
the
two
possibilities
-
“brother”
or