Untranslatability And Strategies For Its Transformation To Translatability

From the perspective of language function, the paper examines the problem of translatability and untranslatability, and mainly studies untranslatability and strategies for its transformation to translatability.Translation is a field full of paradoxes. Translatability and untranslatability are one pair of them. The paradox roots in the inevitable contradictions and difficulties arising in the process of translating and caused by the differences between national languages and cultures.As people understand and study language and translation constantly, they have become less one-sided in stressing the possibility or impossibility of translation, and shown a more sensible and practical attitude. On the one hand, language should be translatable. Language is the carrier of culture as well as the tool of expressing ideas. Cultures and ideas can be understood and exchanged with each other. On the other hand, owing to the regional differences in cultural tradition, language structure and thinking model, sometimes language is not completely translatable, and it is even untranslatable. We can't deny the existence of untranslatable elements in affirming that language is translatable, and we can't take a passive attitude to the elements which are difficult to be translated when admitting the limit of translatability. We should realize that both translatability and untranslatability are relative. Either of them is not a static result, but a transformable dynamic process. With the development of society, the enlarging and deepening of cultural exchange and translators' efforts, untranslatability can be transformed into translatability.This paper consists of four chapters. In chapter 1, the author points out that translation is a field full of paradoxes, and that translatability and untranslatability are a dialectical unity of contradictory opposites. Then the author analyses the reasons for translatability. Chapter 2 discusses the objective existence of untranslatability and its categories. Linguistic andcultural disparities are the causes of untranslatability. Untranslatability is divided into linguistic and cultural untranslatability, "absolute" and relative untranslatability. Chapter 3 explores the problem of translatability and untranslatability from the perspective of language function. The author draws the conclusion that the cognitive and expressive function forms the basis of general translatability between languages while the cultural and the aesthetic functions are the causes ofuntranslatability -- the former produces relative untranslatability andthe latter "absolute untranslatability" (in a certain sense). When a certain discourse mainly bears the cognitive and expressive function, the degree of translatablility is high; when a certain discourse mainly has the aesthetic function, the degree of translatability is low; when a certain discourse mainly represents the cultural phenomena peculiar to the source language and unfamiliar to the target language, the translator may feel it difficult to transfer. Chapter 4 puts forward three basic strategies for the transformation from untranslatability to translatability: semantic domestication, rhetorical domestication and foreignization plus a note.In a word, in general most discourses are translatable, but at the same time, there always exists partial untranslatability. The process that the translator deals with and resolves the phenomenon of partial untranslatability just embodies the fact that translating is also a creative activity. Anyway, the author cordially hopes that this paper can improve people's understanding of translatability and untranslatability, attract much attention to it, and propel translation practice and theory studies forward.