The Contribution Of Contemporary French Philosophical Thoughts To Translation Studies

It is not accidental that translation and philosophy set their eyes on each other,because these two disciplines have inextricably linked since their birth.The translation activity,especially literary translation,has its own problematics,namely the intrinsic relations between the language and the logic unreducible to the language.Therefore,as an important part of the humanities and social sciences,translation provides a space for deep reflection on the relations between linguistics,literature and philosophy,and makes ontological inquiry of meaning and form in the construction of writing,translation,and poetics.In addition,translation contributes to form the mutual opening of cultures in a real sense by integrating the thoughts of the other and otherness in studies.The world outlook and methodology originating from philosophy in translation studies also plays a crucial role in the construction process of translation from practice to theory.The Contemporary French philosophy is regarded as another brilliant “moment of philosophy”,following ancient Greek philosophy and German philosophy.It has formed its own characteristics in the process of accepting the influence of continental philosophy and Anglo-American philosophy.On the basis of translation practice,many French philosophers always pay special attention to translation and what they are concerning is also the focus of translation studies.This dissertation analyzes the evolution of key concepts related to translation such as“subjectivity”,“meaning”,“text”,“space”,“ethics”,“the other”,and “hospitality” etc.,combines the development of philosophical concepts with their influence on translation studies,establishes a dialogue between philosophy and translation studies,and highlights the practical influence and inspiration of the former on the latter.Taking “concept” as the key point,the author aims to construct an outline combining the core concepts in the philosophy trend with the key words in translation studies to form a “dialogue” between them and avoid the “monologue” of philosophy and translation studies respectively.The dissertation consists,in addition to the introduction and conclusion,of four chapters: The Subject of Translation,The Meaning in Translation,The History and Space of Translation and The Ethics of Translation.The introduction first emphasizes the close link between translation and philosophy,and then points out that the construction of translation requires the guidance of philosophical world outlook and methodology.There has been a tradition of philosophical discourse involvement in translation studies since ancient times,and the construction of translation philosophy is currently an urgent task in translation studies.Contemporary French philosophy represents a glorious period in the development history of philosophy.The concepts of “subject”,“meaning”,“language”,“text”,“self” and “the other” stressed by French philosophers are all closely related to translation studies.In the introduction,the current research status at home and abroad is summarized,and the idea of “concept” as the main clue is proposed,in an attempt to initially establish a closer dialogue between French philosophical thoughts and translation studies.The first chapter mainly discusses the subject of translation.With subject as the key word,the understanding of the translation subject is accompanied by reviewing the development of subjectivity in Contemporary French philosophy and the historical evolution of subjectivity in translation studies in order to make rational reflection.The decline of universal subject ushers in the dawn of intersubjectivity,but instead of an absolute negation of subjectivity,intersubjectivity is a sublation of the grand narrative subjectivity.This chapter focuses on the establishment and thinking of the subject by French thinkers and its influence on the positioning of the translation subject,including Paul Ricoeur's “The status of the subject in hermeneutics”,and Julia Kristeva's “The characteristics of subjects in intertextuality theory” and the change of subject cognition and thinking mode from “seeing” to “listening”,which consequently brings about three major trends in the study of translation subjectivity: “detour”,“split” and “altruism”.The second chapter discusses the “meaning” in translation.Firstly,it compares the influence of linguistic nomenclature theory with that of system theory of structuralistic linguistics on the definition of "meaning",and then takes the change of the relationship between "the signifier" and "the signified" in structuralistic linguistics as a clue to sort out the historical evolution process of the theories of many philosophers and thinkers,such as Ferdinand de Saussure,Claude Lévi-Strauss,Roland Barthes and Jacques Lacan.During this process,the signifier is gradually loosely relative to the signified until the signifier becomes superior to the signified with the meaning increasingly becoming contingent and uncertain.The floating signifier in relation to the signified allows Jacques Derrida,master of deconstruction,to play the game of “différance”(a word Derrida invented): The value relationship between meanings cannot be reconstructed in another language.When dissemination provides the text with textuality,every reading of the text may bring new meaning.However,when the meaning of “différance” strikes a fatal blow to the legitimacy of translation,Derrida,on the other hand,paradoxically puts forward the strong appeal of “must be translated”(il faut traduire),pointing out that failure of translation is failure of the whole philosophy.Meanwhile,in the development of French phenomenology,Maurice Merleau-Ponty incorporates the body into the research on the meaning.Like Derrida,his intercorporeality theory also shows the paradoxical characteristics of the possibility and necessity of translation and makes a body translatology possible.Chapter three focuses on the history and space of translation.Referring to the theory of the episteme and discontinuity proposed by M.Foucault,the author analyzes how the translation discourse has been constructed in the history since the Renaissance to the classical period until the modern era,how the translation thoughts in different times are closely connected with the thinking mode,and how the characteristics of “discontinuity” are presented.Secondly,the chapter traces the formation of Foucault's "power space",analyzes the dialectical thoughts of space,knowledge and power,proposes to give translation a spatial dimension outside of history and describes in details the translation space by applying Foucault's thought of“heterotopies”.Foucault's study of power and discourse has brought history into structuralism,proving that translation has never been an expression of freedom of thought.Essentially,it is the result of the rarefaction of discourse and the operation of power.As a means of discourse,translation has been controlled,screened,organized and redistributed by a number of procedures since its birth,and has always been under the gaze of power.Spatial dimension has a far-reaching influence on contemporary translation theories,so subsequently we mainly analyze the application of Edward W.Said's ‘orientalism”,Homi K.Bhabha's “Third Space” theory,together with Pierre Bourdieu's “fields” and “habit” and other spatial concepts in translation studies.Chapter Four focuses on the “ethics of translation”.In this chapter,we first define the concept of “translation ethics” based on the distinction between the concepts of “ethics” and “morality”,and analyze the “ethics” problems in translation as a kind of understanding itself.Secondly,we analyze each of the three key words highlighted in thinking translation ethics: “the other”,“hospitality” and “mourning”,which mainly cover the thoughts of Emmanuel Levinas,Paul Ricoeur and Jacques Derrida.We will explore the historical formation of the three key words and their interpretations in the theories of different philosophers,and relate them closely to translation thinking.On the matter of “the other”,we mainly explore the inheritance and development of Levinas' thought of “the Absolute Other” combining with Antoine Berman's translation ethics of “épreuve de l'étranger”.As to the concepts of“hospitality” and “mourning”,we try to clarify the similarities and differences between Ricoeur and Derrida and analyze the reasons for their differences.In the conclusion,by summarizing the contents of each chapter,the author tries to summarize the corresponding rules and characteristics of the subjectivity of translation,the meaning of translation,the history and space of translation and the ethics of translation.Besides,the last part of the dissertation outlines the general trend of translation studies under the influence of Contemporary French philosophical thoughts,and attempts to look into the future of translation theory.