1.3 Problems of Definition of Translation

We speak of and make brief comments on many different definitions of translation both in China and in the West in the above two sections.We are not,as has been said,trying to know how many different definitions there exist in the world,what we want to know is what translation or translating really means for the purpose of specifying our study object.We come to the definition of translation,simply because it is normally assumed that a definition is supposed to tell of the nature of an object.But,as we have already noticed,the definitions we talked in the above two sections are not all formal and all satisfactory.In other words,not all of them meet the requirement of a formal definition.

According to Modern Chinese Dictionary,“definition is a brief and concise description of the essential features of an object or that of the connotation and denotation of a concept”.Usually,a definition consists of the genus(the family)of thing to which the defined thing belongs,and the distinguishing feature which marks it off from other members of the same family.The requirements for a formal definition,therefore,are the following: first,a definition must set out the essential attributes,i.e.the central features of the nature of the thing defined; secondly,a definition should avoid circularity; thirdly,a definition must not be too wide or too narrow; then,a definition must not be obscure,except for some scientific and philosophical terms difficult to define without obscurity; and last,a definition should not be negative where it can be positive.

In light of these requirements,we have excluded some definitions in the last two sections which are nevertheless also enlightening,such as those stating what translation is NOT.

Ways of processing texts that fail to meet the criteria regarded as pertinent to translation in a given community may result in the product being called paraphrase,imitation or pastiche,but not translation.In this sense norms police the boundaries of what a culture regards as‘legitimate' translation.Moreover,norms embody social and ideological values.The implication is that translation is not an immanent but a relative concept,culturally constructed and therefore historically contingent.(Hermans 2007: 88)

According to Hermans,the definition of translation is culture-bound and culturedetermined.Thus,we have to ask what culture we are in before we can ask the question “what translation is”.

Susan Bassnett goes further than Hermans as to deconstruct and discard the term“translation”.In Bassnett and Lefevere's Constructing Culture: Essays on Literary Translation,Bassnett has an essay entitled“When is a Translation Not a Translation?” In this essay,she asks that: “But can we always be certain that we know what a translation is? And is the object we call a translation always the same kind of text?”(2001: 27).She then goes on to talk about several kinds of translation and one of them is Toury's concept of “pseudotranslation”,referring to “the text that claims falsely to be a translaiton”.“Some writers,Toury points out,resort to the term‘translation' to describe a text that they have created from scratch themselves.He argues that the use of what he calls‘fictitious translations' is often a convenient way of introducing innovations into a literary system”(Bassnett & Lefevere 2001: 27-28).

Besides “pseudotranslation”,Bassnett also discusses “self-translation” and“fictitious translation” etc.She gives example of Samuel Beckett who “famously wrote in both French and English,claiming at times to have translated his own texts”(ibid: 30)and expresses her dissatisfaction and discomfort with “definitions of translation,and in particular with the moralizing discourse of faithfulness and unfaithfulness”.She concludes that “[i]t is probably more helpful to think of translation not so much as a category in its own right,but rather as a set of textual practices with which the writer and the reader collude”(ibid: 39).Translation has thus become a kind of “collusion”.

Bassnett and other scholars of various cultural studies,like Toury,though more descriptive in their approaches,yet,as Munday points out,“have their own ideology and agendas…to move translation studies closer to a cultural studies framework”(Munday 2001: 138).We can not say the cultural view on translation is not right,but the problem is that,as Snell-Hornby(2006: 157)says,“[t]he major question arising here is what exactly is a‘translated text'…For the purposes of objective scientific data,Toury's definition of translation as quoted above will not suffice”.

It seems that we are lingering too long on the socio-cultural-oriented definitions of translation.The reason for it is that these definitions are trendy both in China and in the West at present.Yet,from the above discussion we can see that if we want to find the essence of translation and translating,we cannot depend totally on the cultural approaches which are actually featured by their anti-essentialism and diversity—with a trend of deconstructing translation.Translation will be nothing if translation is everything and everything is translation.What is more,we must be aware that while the cultural approaches share some ideas about translation,there exist divergences and even conflicts among them as Munday(2001: 139)pointed out “these new cultural approaches have widened the horizons of translation studies with a wealth of new insights,but there is also a strong element of conflict and competition between them”.To get a clear picture of it,one can refer to examples given by Munday(ibid).One can also go to Toury(1995/2001).In Toury's Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond,one reads:

To be sure,even now,there is at least one major difference between the interest of the two target-oriented paradigms,which also accounts for the different assumptions each of them proceeds from: whereas mainstream Skopos-theorists still see the ultimate justification of their frame of reference in the more‘realistic' way it can deal with problems of an applied nature,the main object being to‘improve'(i.e.,change!)the world of our experience,my own endeavors have always been geared primarily towards the descriptive-explanatory goal of supplying exhaustive accounts of whatever has been regarded as translational within a target culture,on the way to the formulation of some theoretical laws.(Toury 2001: 25)

If we take an overview of all the above-mentioned definitions,it is not hard for us to find the problems.Theo Hermans' comments on previous definitions of translation is that “[n]early all traditional definitions of translation,whether formal or informal,appeal to some notion of invariance or equivalence”(Hermans 1999/2004: 47).He explains that it is the way we intuitively think about translation:“surely translation means saying the same thing,or something which amounts to the same thing,in a different language”(ibid: 47).While our traditional view of translation is the replacement or substitution of one language by another,modern views on translation are quite different from the old and some of them,such as Hans J.Vermeer and Justa Holz-Manttari etc.,view translation as “a form of translational action based on a source text” and others radically counter that of the old.Gideon Toury holds that “a translation is what is regarded as a translation”(ibid: 49).This of course,does not serve as a good definition,but it tells a change of people's attitude toward translation,from prescriptive to descriptive.Here,we must say that Hermans' comments and analyses are objective,but it dose not mean that “descriptive” is better than “prescriptive”.A definition,after all,is to tell us about the nature of something and the essence of things can only be told by means of our verbal expression which may be a description of the meaning that a term bears in general use and the meaning that the speaker intends to impose upon it.

The problem of the existing definitions,as the authors see it,is not whether they are accurate or not,or descriptive or not,in capturing the essence of translation,but rather that some of them are quite one-sided.They either fail to tell the distinguishing features that make translation a translation,lack of the proper degree of width,or are too absolute,going to an extreme often.For example,if we say translation is rewriting,we are being too wide,as many forms of rewriting do not obviously fall into the family of translation.If we say translation is an art,we should also state what quality or qualities it has that distinguishes it from other things bearing the name of an art.And if we want to tell of the requirement for the task of translation,we should make it reasonably obtainable.

Actually,few definitions in the fields of social science and humanity meet the requirements.There might be mainly three reasons.The first is that the objects to be defined are often complicated and people's understandings about them are difficult,different and dynamic.The second is that people do not quite observe the rules of making a formal definition.The third is that some of the terms referring to these objects are too well established in the common lexicon to be defined for scholarly use.Littelejohn and Foss once mentioned the difficulty to define “communication”:“Theodore Clevenger has noted that‘the continuing problem in defining communication for scholarly or scientific purposes stems from the fact that the verb‘to communicate' is well established in the common lexicon and therefore is not easily captured for scientific use”(Littelejohn & Foss 2005: 6).The problem of definition of translation is,to a great extent,quite like that of the communication,almost of the same nature.

Ideally,to give a thorough definition of an object or concept,people can entail both the intentional(connotative)definition,trying to specify the necessary and sufficient conditions for a thing being a member of a specific family,attempting to set out the essence of the object,and the extensional(denotative)definition,specifying the extension of the object.For our purpose of specifying the object of translation for translation criticism,we are more concerned with the intentional(connotative)definition of “translation”.

To understand the essence of translation,we have first to know what is essential.In philosophy,Essence is the attribute or set of attributes that make an object or substance what it fundamentally is,and which it has by necessity,and without which it loses its identity.Traditionally,or in an Aristotlelian sense,we can expect to know the essence of an object from its definition,for a definition is supposed to be a statement of the essential attributes of the object.However,as has been stated above,partly owing to the extreme subtlety and complexity of translation,and partly owing to the limitedness of people's perception and their not observing strictly the rules of defining objects,it is hard for us to get a definition to our satisfaction from all kinds of the definitions discussed here.

In fact,the question “what translation is” is something ontological,and directly or indirectly,something epistemological and closely connected with linguistics.Ontology,according to Aristotle,is a systematic account of Existence or Being,concerning specifically a series of questions such as what categories of being are fundamental and in what sense the items in those categories can be said to “be”,what is a physical object,what features are the essential,as opposed to merely accidental,attributes of a given object,what constitutes the identity of an object,how many levels of existence or ontological levels are there,can we explain the meaning of saying a physical object or a non-physical entity exists etc.

From the above list of questions,we know that existence has levels.So does essence.Therefore,we can have essence of translation at its different levels.According to Roger T.Bell(2001),the term “translation” has three meanings:(1),translating,referring to the process;(2),a translation,referring to the product; and(3),translation,an abstract concept.That is to say,translation can at least have three levels and each level has its own essence.Looking back at people's definitions of translation,we can say that they are actually talking about the essence of translation at its different levels and from its different aspects.This can be seen more clearly from the following discussions:

“In the scientific examination of the translation process,it should be remembered that three of its characteristics are defining properties: its interlinguality,its unidirectionary,and its irreversibility”(Wilss 2001: 60).

“The essence of translation lies in the preservation of‘meaning' across two different languages.There are three basic aspects to this‘meaning': a semantic aspect,a pragmatic aspect,and a textual aspect of meaning”(House 1981: 25).

According to M.Lederer,the nature of translation process is something universal.“No matter what language and what article it is,the translation procedures of excellent translators are all the same.They share the same features: discriminating the meaning and re-expressing the meaning”(Xu Jun & Yuan Xiaoyi 2001: 152).

Lv Jun and Hou Xiangqun(1999)make it clear in their article “Metatranslatology and Plural Approaches in Translation Studies” that meta-translatology is the theoretical study of the essence of translation and the scientific analyses of the inherent relations between different factors involved in translation.They give us a detailed illustration to the essence of translation as a special form of communication with its intercultural and interlingual features to distinguish it from other forms of communication.For any translation,in any way,is a process of message transfer.

Tan Zaixi(2007)posits that translation is governed by two types of properties,properties that are defined in both “absolute” and “relative” terms.On the one hand,“transfer/change” and “equivalence” are absolutely needed for a text to qualify as a translation,and on the other hand,“transfer/change” and “equivalence” should never be measured in the absolute as the total “transfer/change” and “equivalence” is not the essence of translation.This view of the essence of translation reminds us of the words of M.Lederer.They two bear some resemblance but Tan's is more dialectical and hence more reasonable.