| Since Quine proposed the thesis of indeterminacy of translation in Word and Object (1960),the thesis has immediately aroused wide attention and great response. Putnam even holds that this thesis is the most fascinating and the most discussed philosophical argument since Kant's transcendental deduction of the categories. However, Quine himself argues that this doctrine has suffered stubborn misinterpretations which, if he shared them, would impel him to join his critics in lashing out against his doctrine in no uncertain terms. Therefore, it is necessary to restore Quine's real opinions, and sort out the focus of controversy as well as the crux of the problem from a lot of questions and criticism to further analyze the reasons, clarify the concepts and eliminate misunderstandings, which is significant to accurately grasp the cause and effect of the thesis and its actual place in Quine's philosophical system, thus correctly understanding and evaluating the philosophy of Quine. In addition, the indeterminacy of translation seems to be concerned with the question of translation, but it is actually a matter of philosophy by means of translation. Moreover, it is of great theoretical value and practical significance to examine the issue of translation from the perspective of philosophy, and to explore the inspiration of this thesis for translation studies. In view of this, this dissertation focuses its research object on Quine's thesis of indeterminacy of translation, and makes research into this thesis in four aspects: (1) the theoretical background of the indeterminacy of translation, (2) the main content and reasons for the indeterminacy of translation, (3) the relationship between the indeterminacy of translation and the other two indeterminacies (examined in two chapters), and (4) the inspiration of the indeterminacy of translation for translation studies.Quine's theory of semantics has gradually developed and formed by criticizing traditional semantics. By critique of referential theory of meaning, theory of idea and "two dogmas" of empiricism, Quine finally doubts and rejects such connotative concepts as meaning, analyticity and synonymy that are vague and lack of explanatory power, thus advocating to explain the meaning of language according to the inter-subjective public observable speech behavior tendency.According to traditional semantics, meaning is determined. Both a word and a sentence have a corresponding object that can be called an entity of meaning. And the concepts of synonymy and analyticity closely related to meaning also become important members of the family of traditional semantics. According to the concept of synonymy, if a statement has the same meaning as another statement, this statement is the translation of that one. Quine refers to this uncritical semantics as the myth of language museum, but the point of the indeterminacy of translation is to criticize the myth of museum.The indeterminacy of translation does not mean that there is no acceptable translation. Its essence is indeterminacy of meaning, and its gist is that a native expression can be empirically translated into another language equally defensibly in either of two ways (i.e., the two translations both correspond to the concerned totality of verbal behaviors), but they have different meanings in another language. The reasons for this are as follows: (1) The indeterminacy of translation is based on behaviorism. If the non-observation sentences go beyond the observation data, there must appear indeterminacy of meaning. (2) Quine's semantics is holism of meaning that is established on the basis of holism. A single sentence (saving observation sentences) does not have meaning alone and cannot individually be tested by experience, either. The unit of having meaning is a large enough system of sentences. The sentences within the system can make compensatory adjustment according to the external experience and be redistributed linguistic meaning and truth value, thus inevitably resulting in indeterminacy of meaning. (3) Quine's view of language is the result of his naturalism (i.e., naturalistic view of language). This view of language advocates research into language learning by the means of natural sciences,refuses "transcendental"meaning and abandons the myth of language museum, thus giving up the pursuit for determinacy of meaning. Moreover, Quine's indeterminacy of translation serves for his naturalized epistomology. Because of his naturalistic position, Quine must remove the vague connotative concepts from his scientific theory so as to construct a solid and reliable semantic theory, and the indeterminacy of translation is used to clear obstacles for Quine to establish scientific semantics.On the issue of the relationship between theory and evidence, what is closely related to the indeterminacy of translation is the thesis of underdetermination of theory. That is, the empirical evidence is not sufficient to determine which theory is correct between two or more competing theories. These theories may be completely opposite, but can be supported by empirical evidence equally. But the indeterminacy of translation is not just an instance of the underdetermination of theory; on the contrary, it is an additional and stronger thesis. There is not only clear symmetry but also obvious difference between the indeterminacy of translation and the underdetermination of theory: (1) The two indeterminacies both have logically incompatible but empirically equivalent systems. The former has two logically incompatible but equally correct translation systems, and the latter has two logically incompatible but empirically equivalent theoretical systems. However,there is no fact of the matter to the indeterminacy of translation, while there is a fact of the matter to the underdetermination of theory. The key point here is that the verbal behavior tendency in radical translation is the only criterion by which we examine the truth or falsity of translation, and it is the only fact involved in translation. However, in the theory construction, although the observation evidence is the only criterion for testing truth, the scientific theory goes beyond the observations, and hence, not all the theories are true even though they have been tested by the observations. (2) The reason for the two indeterminacies lies in the difference between observation sentences and non-observation sentences, i.e., the theory sentence is not individually equivalent to any observation sentence. In the two different systems, observation sentences have determinate empirical meaning or empirical content, but non-observation sentences alone have no independent empirical meaning or empirical content. Even though all possible observations are fixed, physical theory can still vary. Even if the theory of the world is determinate, there is still indeterminacy of translation. (3) The two indeterminacies are built on the basis of holism. In either system, all possible evidence is not sufficient to decide respective system uniquely, but each system can be consistent with respective verbal behavior or observation evidence by adjusting within the system.What the indeterminacy of translation proves is that the entities as sentence meanings are untenable; what the underdetermination of theory shows is that there are various defensible ways of constructing the world.On the issue of reference, what is easily confused with the indeterminacy of translation is the inscrutability of reference or the indeterminacy of reference. The indeterminacy of translation,which is usually referred to as the indeterminacy of meaning of sentences, is a completely different from the indeterminacy of reference. The indeterminacy of reference essentially reflects the relativity of ontology. It appears not only in radical translation, but also in our mother tongue.And the root cause of the indeterminacy of reference is that we can give different interpretations to the conceptual words corresponding to all the words in a language,and can still keep the truth value invariable of the corresponding statements in the two object systems. The relationship or intersection occurs in the indeterminacy of translation of terms between the indeterminacy of translation and the indeterminacy of reference. The gavagai example in radical translation is at best an example only of the indeterminacy of terms, not of the indeterminacy of translation of sentences, because as an observation sentence, the translation of Gavagai is determinate. The key point of this example is that even though as an observation sentence,the translation of "Gavagai"has been uniquely determined, as a term, the reference or translation of "gavagai" is still indeterminate. The gist of the indeterminacy of reference is that different analytical hypotheses can translate the same use of a native term as either a singular term or a general term. As for a singular term, it can be either translated as an abstract singular term or a concrete singular term.And for a general term, it can be either translated as an abstract general term or a concrete general term. If the term is translated as a term of divided reference, diverse analytical hypotheses will attribute different references to the term, thus assigning different ontology to the native language.Therefore, there is no uniquely correct translation in the matter of term or reference.Although the indeterminacy of translation is philosophical, it also has great significance and value on translation studies. The thesis brings translation studies two important enlightenments: (1)The meaning in daily translation is indeterminate, which results in the change of translation criteria. The traditional linguistic translation theory holds that translation is the correspondence and transformation of the meaning of the source text, and the target text is the copy and reproduction of the original meaning. Accordingly, "faithfulness" and "equivalence" become an important criterion to measure the quality of translation. But the principle of indeterminacy of meaning tells us that the meaning of the source text is changing and indeterminate in the course of translation. The meaning of the target text is not the reappearance of the original meaning but the reexpression or reinterpretation of the original meaning. Hence, the so-called "faithfulness" and"equivalence" are not the only criteria to measure translation; on the contrary, under the premise of retaining the original overall semantic effect, "expressiveness" and "fluency" as the translation criteria seem to be more reasonable. (2) The holism should be observed in daily translation, which results in the expansion of translation unit. Under the principle of the translation holism, the boundary between translatability and untranslatability has gradually blurred. As long as the target text and the source text can produce a similar overall semantic effect, they are translatable or basically translatable. The so-called untranslatability or incomplete translatability mainly refers to the specific forms of the language, because the form cannot exist alone without the language.Generally speaking, the larger the translation unit is, the higher the degree of translatability becomes. The meaning unit of translation is the whole text, or even the whole of cultural system,instead of a single sentence. However, no matter what level of translation unit is involved in translation, the translator should always follow the principle of holism. |
PDF Full Text Request