A Hermeneutic Study On Principles Of Translation Criticism

As a specialized study of understanding and meaning, hermeneutics is closely connected with translation theory and practice. During the late18th and the early19th century, special hermeneutics provided interpretation methods and practical skills for theology and law, with its interpretation objects changing from special texts to secular ones, and the interpretation strategies changing from collecting fragments of rules into constructing an interpretation system. In the middle and the end of the19th century, it was widely used in literature, history and so on, becoming general hermeneutics. General hermeneutics aims at providing general methodological principles for human science, and it came from Heidegger’s phenomenology and was further developed into Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. Contemporary philosophical hermeneutics has provided a new theoretical field of vision for human science and changed people’s ways of thinking. Philosophical hermeneutics has greatly influenced the studies of the nature of translation, translation criteria and translation criticism, changed people’s traditional mindset of the nature of translation, broadened the dimension of the meaning of the text, and thus offered a new perspective for translation studies. In recent years, translation studies have entered an unprecedentedly active stage because of different theoretical frameworks put forward by many schools and scholars in their writing. However, no matter how creative those schools and scholars are, they can never go beyond hermeneutics. In other words, translation is essentially a kind of text comprehension and interpretation.Philosophical hermeneutics was brought into Chinese academia during the1980s. Its main representative Gadamer and many of his ideas such as the historicity of understanding, prejudice theory, theory of horizons and effective-history have been widely argued and referred to and "translation is interpretation" has been accepted by many scholars of translation studies in our country. In recent years, the subjectivity of translation, the rationality and effectiveness of understanding and interpretation, the limits of interpretation and other issues have aroused heated discussions, which has deepened our understanding of translation and offered new research angles. Within hermeneutics, translation is interpretation, which emphasizes the intersubjectivity between the translator and the text (including the original author), the participation of readers in the generation of meaning of the translated text. It has greatly challenged the traditional translation standard of "faithfulness" and "equivalence", enabling us to change the ideas about the nature of translation and look at translation with tolerance and an open mind. To some extent, the application of philosophical hermeneutics in the field of translation studies has proved fruitful, though its implementation is not at all systematic and deep enough.In recent years, with unceasing innovation of the theory of translation studies, criteria of translation from single to multiple have become a basic consensus, and the study on the method of translation criticism also appeared gratifying achievements, which in the research of translation criticism, the traditional fault-finding or impression type has been shifted to the current multi-level angle dynamic theory. However, there still remains a lot of problems both in the theory and the practice of translation criticism.The debate about the issues of translation standards, methods and principles of translation criticism has never stopped. Many discussions of the issues stay on the method level, experts and scholars are trying to make various efforts, looking forward to a more profound perspective to bring about a thorough and systematic research to these questions.As is known, translation criticism is part of translation studies and it helps the development of the translation cause. The mission of translation criticism is to guarantee to realize the value of translation, to expand and improve the meaning of the original text and the translated text. Because of this, problems in translation criticism must be solved effectively. Here the author holds that, to solve the theoretic and practical problems in translation criticism, we’d better apply the practical wisdom and interpretation principles of philosophical hermeneutics to translation criticism, form certain rules, and then construct the philosophical hermeneutics theory of translation criticism. Specifically, the aim of the present paper is to explore the principles of translation criticism with the application of philosophical hermeneutics, and thus provide a new perspective for the study of translation criticism.Translation criticism is an analytical comment on the translated text and related translation phenomena. It is the understanding and interpretation of the translated text. This paper first analyzes the object of translation criticism, translated texts. The basic concepts of texts, the essence of text meaning and that of understanding and interpretation are explained, and then the inner relationship between translation criticism and text understanding and interpretation is revealed. After that, the author focuses on the understanding of the meaning of texts, and, by citing some core concepts and ideas of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, analyzes the generation and nature of translated texts and approaches to realize the text meaning. The author emphasizes that the meaning of a translated text is the effective-history meaning produced by the dialogue between critics and the text and changes with timing and situation. It is a result of the fusion of horizons between critics and the original text, the original author, the translator and the translated text, and therefore it is not fixed. Consequently, in translation practice, how to realize the meaning of the translated text varies because of the translator, since he is in his own unique history and culture, while the original text and original author are also in their own unique historical and cultural circumstances. This will inevitably result in differences of the fusion of horizons between the translated text and the original one, the translator and the original author, and therefore generate different meanings for the same text. For that matter, there is no single standard to evaluate the meaning of a translated text, and critical standards must be multivariate and dynamic. So, to guarantee a reasonable evaluation of the value and significance of the translated text makes the main target of translation criticism. And the key is to establish a set of evaluation principles. In this sense, certain reasonable and effective principles of translation criticism should be set before we could finally establish a philosophical hermeneutics theory of translation criticism.In this paper, the author has found in the characteristic of charity in philosophical hermeneutics some basic clues to the principle of charity on which to build translation criticism. Besides, the author puts forward that charity should be treated as a principle rather than an attitude.According to this principle of Charity in translation criticism, the author points out that translation criticism is a rational dialogue about meaning, and meaning gets regenerated in the dialogue. The basic task of translation criticism is to discard prejudices through the dialogue and to ensure the scientificity, validity and rationality of translation. However, to have this dialogue we must respect our partners and acknowledge that they may be right. In addition, we should fully consider the situations in which the original author, the translator, the readers and critics understand and interpret. For that matter, we should admit that the essence of translation criticism is to raise questions and provoke thinking rather than answer all questions (as methodological hermeneutics does). It may not necessarily solve a problem, but lead to deep thought of new problems. So, this principle of Charity based on philosophical hermeneutics is not the methodology of translation criticism, but rather a new angle for the theoretical construction of translation criticism. It can also be used in analyzing translation criticism theories.The principles of translation criticism are of great value and significance. The principle of Charity is necessary for rational understanding and communication; it is the premise of the development of translation criticism; it is a guarantee of the booming of translation cause. The discussion of the principle of Charity will surely lead to more researches on translation criticism theories from the perspective of philosophical hermeneutics.