What is the use of translation theory?

Many current translators will question more or less in their hearts: "What is the use of translation theory?" Many people do not understand theory or they will translate; relatively, will it be translated after understanding the theory? Far. It is like people who will only talk about the principle and posture of swimming. Once the water is laid out, it may soon extinguish. Because many professional translators have never learned any translation theory, they can still survive in the market, so what value does translation theory have for translators? This problem has always been a translator practitioner The gap that is difficult to cross, even misunderstand each other and even the roots of each other. The author used the background of professional translation and current professor translation theory. He believed that the above translator's questioning and observation was not wrong, but it was not comprehensive enough, and he probably had improper expectations and presets for translation theory.

First of all, starting from the college's point of view, translators such as Toury and Chesterman believe that translation theory does not necessarily need to study practical translation methods to assist the translator. They all become good people in society. Toury even advocated that translation practice belongs to the translators and translators to discuss. Translator theoretical scholars do not find the actual use of actual use for their theory, that is, the theory does not exist to guide practice. It can be seen that some translation theories have screened the line with practicality at the beginning, and only focus on their own value; the value of these translation theories is not attached to actual use, and humanities such as literature, philosophy, art, etc. may not be practical. It may not be practical. But it is very valuable.

And even if the translation theory should guide the translation practice, in addition, the translation theory is necessary to describe, interpret, predict, and evaluate the process and finished product of translation. The translator should not only guide the expectations and requirements of "how to translate". The translation theory also needs to deal with issues such as "translation" and "why translation", as well as the impact of the language, psychology, society, history, and culture of the translation of the target language. They are all important research issues. In other words, guiding translation practice is only part of the purpose of the translation theory, not all or not necessarily the most important purpose.

However, it is undeniable that the translation theory carefully constructed by many scholars has not been welcomed by the translator. One of the important reasons is that the term system is complicated. Different schools have created a special system. In the system of the system, it is difficult to understand the abstract discussions of these scholars. Moreover, the farther the professional term is away from the daily language usage, it seems that the theoretical is more pure. Finally, it is limited to the lonely appreciation of a small number of scholars in the ivory tower, and the self -translation market dialogue with the external translation market is almost completely decoupled. It is no wonder that the dissatisfaction or even despise of professional translators, because the discussion of these scholars has never considered the needs of the translator's work since the beginning. However, not all translation theories are separated from practice. There are also many theories to view translation activities from the perspective of language function or text analysis. The relationship between theory and practice is very close. Functional theories of translation has a high degree of guiding translation practice, which is worthy of translator reference applications. In short, not all translation theories have nothing to do with the actual translation. Some theories are still closely related to practice and complement each other.

Source: Translation teaching and research

Author: Liao Baisen

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