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  3. There are two ways in which we can think of literary translation: as reproduc

There are two ways in which we can think of literary translation: as reproduc

游客2023-12-17  4
问题    There are two ways in which we can think of literary translation: as reproduction and as recreation. If we think of translation as reproduction, it is a safe and harmless enough business: the translator is a literature processor into which the text to be translated is inserted and out of which it ought to emerge identical, but in another language.
   But unfortunately the human mind is an imperfect machine, and the goal of precise interlinguistic message-transference is never-achieved; so the translator offers humble apologies for being capable of producing only a pale shadow of the original. Since all he is doing is copying another’s meanings from one language to another, he removes himself from sight so that the writer’s genius can shine as brightly as may be. To do this, he uses a neutral, conventionally literary language which ensures that the result will indeed be a pale shadow, in which it is impossible for anybody’s genius to shine.
   Readers also regard the translator as a neutral meaning-conveyor, then attribute the mediocrity of the translation to the original author. Martin Amis, for example, declares that Don Quixote is unreadable, without stopping to think about the consequences of the fact that what he has read or not read is what a translator wrote, not what Cervantes wrote. If we regard literary translation like this, as message-transference, we have to conclude that before very long it will be carried out perfectly well by computers.
   There are many pressures encouraging translators to accept this description of their work, apart from the fact that it is a scientific description and therefore must be right. Tradition is one such additional encouragement, because meaning-transference has been the dominant philosophy and manner of literary translation into English for at least three hundred years. The large publishing houses provide further encouragement, since they also expect the translator to be a literature-processor, who not only’ copies texts but simplifies them as well, eliminating troublesome complexities and manufacturing a readily consumable product for the marketplace.
   But there is another way in which we can think of literary translation. We can regard the translator not as a passive reproducer of meanings but as an active reader first, and then a creative rewriter of what be has read. This description has the advantages of being more interesting and of corresponding more closely to reality, because a pile of sheets of paper with little squiggly lines on them, glued together along one side, only becomes a work of literature when somebody reads it, and reading is not just a logical process but one involving the whole being: the feelings and the intuitions and the memory and the creative imagination and the whole life experience of the reader.
   Computers cannot read, they can only scan. And since the combination of all those human components is unique in each person, there are as many Don Quixotes as there are readers of Don Quixote, as Jorge Luis Borges once declared.
   Any translation of this novel is the translator’s account of his reading of it, rather than some inevitably pale shadow of what Cervantes wrote. It will only be a pale shadow if the translator is a dull reader, per haps as a result of accepting the preconditioning that goes with the role of literature processor.
   You may object that what I am advocating is extreme chaotic subjectivism, leading to the conclusion that anything goes, in reading and therefore in translation; but it is not, because reading is guided by its own conventions, the interpersonal roles of the literary game that we internalize as we acquire literary experience. By reference to these, we can agree, by reasoned argument, that some readings are more appropriate than others, and therefore that some translations are better than others. [br] The author uses all of the following expressions interchangeably to support his view EXCEPT ______.
选项 A、literature processor.
B、message transference.
C、meaning conveyor.
D、chaotic subjectivism.
答案 D
解析 细节题。根据各选项内容定位本题。首段末句指出：the translator is a literature processor．．．。第二段首句提到：the goal of precise interlinguistic message-transference is never achieved。第三段首句指出； Readers also regard the translator as a neutral meaning-conveyor。这几个合成词都出现在文章的前几段。浏览这部分内容，发现作者讨论的主要是翻译如何被当作一种简单复制的过程，[A]、[B]和[C]被用来表达这种观点。chaotic subjectivism出现在末段，这是指作者认为自己前面的论述可能招致的评价，与前三项谈论的内容不同，故为答案。
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