A Constructive Study On Multifold And Dynamic Translation Criticism

"Now that it is translated and finished, everybody can read and criticize it,"Martin Luther, an influential preacher and reformist more than 4 centuries ago, justified the existence of translation criticism. When the critics showed themselves all too ready with their criticism, Anthony G. Oettinger (1963) remarked in his book:"No matter how difficult it may be to translate, it is even more difficult to judge a translation. Everyone works on his own."Moreover, as Holmes put it in 1988, the level of translation criticism is frequently"very low, and in many countries still quite uninfluenced by developments within the field of translation studies"Translation criticism, an age-old practice, is supposed to date back to the times of Buddhist scripture translation in China, particularly a monk called Dao'an. Over those years translation criticism, or under any other name, never ceased. Modern times saw a surge of it in the works of Lu Xun, Guo Moruo, Mao Dun and their peers. Since the liberation, increasing emphasis has been attached to this cause. Likewise, translation criticism is extensively and consistently practiced in the West and has made great headways.In tracing its history, we find that the common ground shared by the Chinese and Western concepts of translation criticism is the fidelity to the source text and the prevalence of fluency over other translation strategies. Meanwhile, the"culture turn"has exerted as significant an impact on both as on other sectors of translation studies. On the other hand, there is much difference between the two: to be exact, the Chinese concepts are lagging behind in terms of the theoretical awareness, the extensiveness and depth of the relevant study and the compact and clear glossary system. For example, the Chinese translation criticism is lacking in sound theoretical support, whereas the Western counterpart is not thin on it. According to Jenny Williams and Andrew Chesterman (2004: 8-9), there are three general approaches to quality assessment: source-oriented, target-language oriented and translation effects. All three are in relatively full swing with much theoretical works available.The study of current evaluative practices presents a particular set of problems, esp. in China. Translation criticism is left to (expert) intuition or taste, thus highly subjective appraisals are pervasive. Or error identification is the constant occupation, which makes much sense only when speaking of didactic purposes. Or critics are too ready to make arbitrary value judgments, so they describe translations as'good'or'bad'without seriously questioning or qualifying those adjectives. Or translation criticism has become the testing field of an array of theories whatsoever; in other words, it is not done for its own sake.In order to avert the impressionism and unsubstantiated opinions about translation criticism, this paper proposes a brand-new approach. In the first place, we redefine translation criticism as a separate area of applied translation studies where critics, with the help of translation studies or other relevant studies and a certain set of criteria, make an analysis...