An Analysis Of The Defects Of Derrida's Deconstructive Translation Theory

Deconstruction is a post-structuralism trend of thought which inaugurated in the late 1960s in France. It originates in philosophy but penetrates into every aspect of our social life. Deconstruction is established from the criticism of structuralism. It takes dispelling as a main feature and deconstructs some significant concepts of structuralism such as"structure"and"meaning". So it is called"deconstruction". It originates in Jacques Derrida, who was often called the"the father of deconstruction". Michel Foucault and Lawrence Venuti are also important representatives of deconstruction.Deconstructive translation theory is a translation theory guided by deconstruction. In recent years, deconstructive translation theory has a great impact on the theories and practice of translation. The main reasons are, firstly, it challenges the traditional translation theories which intend to establish a system with one center, binary opposition and worship of"the only truth". Deconstruction, quite to the contrary, aims at breaking this one-centered mechanism, and claims that an open pluralistic and tolerant system should be established. On the other hand, deconstruction summons to break the authority of the author as well as the source text and emphasizes that there should be many versions of translation and textualism is unnecessary. The translator should try to show his creative ability. Moreover, the differences between languages and cultures ought to be thought much other than the similarities. All the points above exhibit the rebellious characters of deconstruction. They overturn the sovereign status of author and original texts in traditional translation theory and study translation in multidimensional angle.Although deconstructive translation theory makes huge contributions to translation theories, we should also see that there exist some apparent defects. From Marxism's dialectical materialism we can see that deconstructive translation theory is idealism. It discusses too much on theory and ignores practical application, which easily causes theory deviate from the practice. The"différance"and"dissemination"of deconstruction hold that the meaning of texts is always changing, so in a sense translation is impossible, so this exaggerates absolute variation and negates relative stability.Educated by Marxism, we should take into consideration the contributions and defects of deconstructive translation theory in a dialectical way. The translation field is an open field, and within limit deconstructive translation theory is proper for it. Even so, we can not ignore to have clear views to the defects of deconstructive translation theory.