Translational Restitution: A Theory For Translation From Heideggerian Phenomenology

The present study is, in general, a phenomenological exploration about translatology on the existential-ontological level. To apply the so-called"working-method of phenomenology"to the field of translation studies in accordance with Heideggerean hermeneutic phenomenology not only requires the object of translation studies be put into Heidegger's Thinking from a new point of view but also necessitates Heidegger's Destructing the prolonged conceptions about translatology. Destruction here does not mean to bury the past in nullity but to work out or lay open the working foundation for those conceptions; therefore, the purpose of this doing is positive, while its negative effect remains periphrastic and by-productive. These two requirements belong together; they depend upon each other. To shift the point of view on translation studies presupposes the laying bare of working conditions of possibility of translation. In the last analysis, both of them are essentially bound up with the ways in which the question of the meaning of Being is formulated; yet only within this formulation of the meaning of Being can it be possible to make a phenomenological investigation into the working conditions of possibility of translation on the ontological level. Guided by Heidegger's"existential-ontological analytics of the human Being", we find that the human Being itself is always already circular or restitutional in its understanding of Being—the only way in which Being gets itself performed and actualized. This always already circular or restitutional structure is what Heidegger calls the hermeneutic structure of"as", which not merely makes the foreunderstanding but also its derivative modes of interpretation/translation and various kinds of knowing possible. On Heidegger's view, the essence of the human being lies in its existence, and existence is nothing but the Being of the"there", therefore the human being is a potentiality-for-Being. Understanding is an existential Being of the human being's ownmost potentiality-for-Being, which exists in such a way that this kind of Being can disclose in itself what its Being is capable of. But Being is always the Being of an entity, therefore there is a necessary correspondence between the Being of the human being and the Being of an entity; the former always determines the latter and hence an entity. It is, however, pointless to infer that"meaning determines reference"because such inference overlooks the fact that Being is always already the Being-in-the-world. The world in this unitary phenomenon of"Being-in-the-world"does not refer to a surrounding or an environment considered objectively; or something at which scientists aim their gaze; or a mere collection of the countable or uncountable, familiar and unfamiliar things that stand there purely as occurrences; but one which is ever-nonobjective to which we are subject as long as we exist from birth to death, where blessing and curse keep us transported into Being. If the interpretative"as"runs the hermeneutic model—Being-entities-world, then upon this model, entities encountered by human beings must be within-the-world. The world is equiprimordial with the understanding of being. In Heidegger's phenomenological hermeneutics, such terms as being, understanding, meaning, and world are always already co-original and interdependent. As a being-in-the-world, the translator is of course within the framework expounded by Heidegger's analytics of the human being. What translators can do only intensifies their being-in-the-world. Therefore, enlightened with that framework, we should be more transparent not merely with the existential states of translators but also with the essence of translational restitution, because the conditions of possibility of translation are at the same time conditions of possibility of entities to be translated.Our treatise proceeds as follows.Chapter One outlines current translation studies, our object, rationale and objectives of the present research.Chapters Two and Three make"A Review of the Relevant Literature": because Heidegger's hermeneutic phenomenology is applied to translation studies under the phenomenological point of view for the first time, it is necessary to make it on a safe ground with relevant materials at hand. We try to find out the relevant materials to bridge Heidegger and the topic of the present thesis. In particular, our efforts have been made in exploring Heideggerian senses of understanding and interpretation with a view to demonstrate how essential or fundamental they are in translational restitution.Chapter Four inquires into the problem of commensurability through reflections on Heidegger's conception of phenomenology as compared with the relevant theories involving Sperber & Wilson, and Gutt: the commensurability between Heidegger and Sperber & Wilson phenomenologically embodies, first of all, in Heideggerian senses of understanding and interpretation which are equiprimordial with the human being's practical existence. Sperber & Wilson's communication theory—a theory about how the human language is used by the human being in the practical world—is ultimately founded upon Heideggerian senses of understanding and interpretation. Like Heideggerian senses of understanding and interpretation, it is not concerned primarily with the lingual users'know-what; it is concerned, first of all, with know-how—the human being's capability of how to understand and interpret in a lingually constructed world or a system of lingual Relations. On Heidegger's view, a human is such a being as understands and speaks. The conceptions of understanding and interpretation in Heidegger's hermeneutic phenomenology refer to nothing but the entire scope of ability, competence, or know-how rather than know-what. Gutt, largely based upon Sperber & Wilson's communication theory, firmly holds that translation is just a mode of communication; and accordingly he believes that translation studies must be presupposed by the"Relevance Theory of Communication and Cognition". On his view, the act of translation is nothing more than a subset or hyponymy of communication. But communication ontologically exists in Discourse—the constitutive agency for communication. Therefore the most primordial"home"of Gutt's explanatory translation theory is ultimately found in the human understanding of being built up with language"the house of being", a home in which man dwells.Chapter Five examines Heidegger's phenomenological method in translatology: as a method, Heidegger's phenomenology is not merely circular but also ontological in character. It is the most fundamental interpretative method which ontologically discloses the existential conditions of our understanding: something as something. Since"to interpret is to translate"(Palmer, 1969: 26), the idea can be reasonably applied to translation studies. In fact, the phenomenological slogan"To the things themselves!"in the last analysis, is to the"being of understanding"of the human being whose existence is being-in-the-world.Chapter Six ponders on translation being a process of restitution in Heideggerian sense of hermeneutic phenomenology: Whatever it is, or no matter how it is done, translation can only be the process of restitution of the meaning of the being generated and accomplished by explicitly actualizing the interpretative (hermeneutic) structure of something as something.Chapter Seven applies the author's view on faithfulness to translation studies: faithfulness is not a property that can be added to or removed categorically, but it existentially characterizes the"understanding of being", which is the most primordial foundation for interpretation/translation. We are so faithful in our"understanding of being"that without it we simply cannot be as such, as that as we are.Chapter Eight concludes the whole thesis by putting forward the following remarks: Being-in-the-world is the most basic unity of phenomenon in human existence, and each item of this phenomenon cannot stand alone for a single moment, so much so that the human being is so concrete, ownmost and vivid that it cannot but be called as"Dasein". Dasein's translation or interpretation is the restitution of the primary understanding of being, which takes place before the dichotomy between subject and object. So long as translation or interpretation is the restitution of the meaning of being, translation or interpretation must take being-in-the-world as its fundamental ontology. Translation and meaning are not only of freedom but also of transcendence. To be transcendental towards"going to the things themselves"has to abide by the Heidegger's phenomenology which guarantees our transcendence as the most fundamental existential understanding of being, and thus into the meaningful system of relations characterized by various"in-order-to"and"for-the-sake-of". Through the restitution of the primary understanding of being in a way in which the interpretative"as-structure"of the primary understanding is made explicitly and thematically is the phenomenological"going to the things themselves". Only taking this attitude to the relationship between human beings and the world our lifeworld can be existentially disclosed as such and such in the sense of Laozi's"Dwelling with the being of darkness while understanding the being of thatness and whatness"(知其白守其黑).