A Pragmatic Concept of Translation*
Hsiu-Hwang Ho
*¥Z©ó¡mõ¾Ç½×µû¡n²Ä¤@´Á¡A°ê¥ß»OÆW¤j¾Ç¡A»O¥_¡A1971¦~1¤ë¡C
1.The aim of this paper
Translation
is a fairly common activity known to most of us. It is an activity of
rewriting a body of discourse into another body of discourse upon the
condition that between the original body of discourse and the resulting
one, there exists some certain sort of relationship. What exactly this
relationship is, I shall try to specify in this discussion.
However, I am
not going to develop a complete theory of translation. What I wish to
do is this: to consider translation as a linguistic activity which can
be illuminated by the theory of meaning proposed and developed by Henry
S. Leonard [1],[2],[3],[4], and thereon to outline a pragmatic concept
of translation.
By a body of
discourse I mean a string of signs related one with the other in such a
way that the whole string taken as a unit can be used to signify some
purpose or purposes intended by the person who utters the string.1
In this
paper, I shall propose a definition, or rule, establishing the
circumstances under which one may say that one body of discourse D' is a
translation of another body of discourse D. A succession of different
considerations will lead to a succession of refinements of that
definition.
2.Interlinguistic and intralinguistic translation
Translation
may proceed within a language, or it may proceed between one language
and another language. As an example of the former, we may take the
activity in which we rewrite a sentence into another sentence within the
same language in order to facilitate understanding; as examples of the
latter, we may take those activities of rewriting one of Shakespeare's
poems into its story in prose, or rewriting Heine's "Du Bist wie eine
Blume" into English. He shall call the former an intralinguistic translation , and the latter, interlinguistic ones.2
It is
interlinguistic translation which primarily concerns us in this paper.
Yet most of what we shall have to say will also apply to intralinguistic
translation.
3.A Pragmatic account of translation
Pragmatics is
defined as the science of the relations between signs and sign-users.
It deals with problems such as the uses or functions of language, as,
for example, when we classify the uses of language into cognitive,
practical and esthetic ([3] or[4], p.16).However, it has a much wider
scope than this. For instance, all the following affirmations fall
within the scope of pragmatics:
(a) The word 'semiotic' is not used by Aristotle.
(b) In Denmark, people say 'Glaedelig Jul' when we would say 'Merry Christmas'.
(c) In Germany, people use 'Morgenstern'to denote a star.
(d) It is (pragmatically) undetermined whether the following is a sentence: 'Today is
'.
To think about translation, when we
rewrite a body of discourse D into another of body discourse D', we may,
and often do, have in mind one of the following considerations:
(i)While D is in a certain language
l, D' is in another language
l1.
For example, D is in English while D' is in German. That is to say, we
want to translate a string of signs in English into another string in
German.
(ii)While D is a certain literary style
s, D' is in another style
s1.
For example, D is in poetic style, while D' is in prose style. That is
to say, we want to translate a poem or a line of poetry into prose or
into a sentence or sentences in prose form.
(iii)While D is difficult for some people
x to understand, D' is easier for
x
to understand. That is to say, we want to translate a body of discourse
which is difficult for a certain person or group of persons to
understand into another body of discourse which is easier for him or
them to understand.
But there are no pragmatic rules which
require that something of this sort must be fulfilled in order that
discourse D' may be called a translation of discourse D. For example, it
is not always the case that we translate a string of signs more
difficult for certain person(s) to understand into one easier for him
(them). It could well be the reverse. We may on some occasions try to
translate a paragraph easier for certain person(s) into one more
difficult for him (them). Notably in war time's military correspondence,
we try to send a code message instead of a message written in a plain
language. In this case, we translate a paragraph (e.g., in English)
which is more easily understandable for certain persons, namely, the
enemies, into another for them more difficult one. Similar remarks hold
for the other pragmatic considerations listed above.
There are, the several pragmatic
considerations which are commonly practised but are not inviolable from a
logical point of view. However, we can formulate a pragmatic rule which
may not be violated in translation. As a preliminary formulation of
this rule, we put down the following:
R1. A discourse D' is said to be a
translation of another discourse D if and only if utterances of D' and
of D would serve the same purpose or purposes.
In other words, D' is a translation of D
if and only if they both exhibit the same use(s) or function(s) of
language. For example, if an utterance of D would constitute a cognitive
use of language, one of D' must also constitute a cognitive use; if one
of D would constitute an esthetic use, one of D' must do likewise.
In connection with
R1, I find
Leonard's analysis of "purpose" into a concern and a topic of concern
turns out to be especially illuminating. According to Leonard, an
expression may be said to express a person's concern, it
indicates his topic or concern, and we also say that it
signifies his purpose. Expression, indication and signification are therefore said to be three different modes of meaning.
3 In the light of this analysis, we may reformulate
R1 as follows.
R1a. A discourse D' is a
translation of another discourse D if and only if an utterance of D' and
one of D would express the same concern(s) and indicate the same
topic(s) of concern, i.e., if and only if they would signify the same
purpose(s).
Two features of formulation
R1a should be noticed. Each is a feature which will eventually necessitate some reformulation. (1)
R1a is elliptical in two respects: it does not mention the languages, ,
l1 and
l,
in which D' and D are framed. Neither does it refer the mentioned
purposes to the presumed author of the original discourse D. The
resulting discourse D' must be able to serve the same purpose(s) as the
author of D intended to serve and to signify by his utterance of D.(2)
R1a
is so framed as to allow that both D' and D signify a multiplicity of
purposes. The formulation suggests that all purposes that utterances of
either one would signifies must be signified by utterances of the other.
But surely this is too strong a demand.
Let us first attend to this second difficulty.
4.Essential purposesIn discussing purpose, Leonard makes some suggestive distinctions.
4For
example, he notes that a person may have many purposes in mind in the
performance of a single action. Of these purposes, some may be said to
be
primary, others
secondary; that is, some may be the
main things that he want to accomplish, others, the minor things. Again,
some purposes may be (relatively)
immediate, others (relatively)
remote;
that is , some may be things that he wants to accomplish right away,
others, after a while. Further, one purpose of an action may be said to
be
subservient to another purpose of the same action: purposed as a means to accomplish the other. Or the two may be said to be
independent: that is, neither is purposed as a means to, or in order to accomplish, the other.
This analysis has a special significance
to our pragmatic account of translation. For example, a body of
discourse may signify more than one purpose of its author, but the
signified purposes may not be of equal weight. In doing translation, the
primary purposes(s) intended in the original discourse must be
preserved as primary in the resulting discourse, while the secondary
purpose(s) may or may not be changed or sacrificed according to the
insight that a translator has when he considers in what way he can best
signify in the translation the author's original primary purpose(s).
In short, a translator must distinguish
between tolerably sacrificable purposes and essential (i.e., not
tolerably sacrificable) purposes signified by a body of discourse D, and
R1a must be modified so as to demand of the translation D' that it
signify all of the essential purposes of D.
R1b. A discourse D' is a
translation of another discourse D if and only if utterances of D' and
of D would signify the same essential purposes.
The next few sections of this paper are concerned with some questions relative to the distinction between
tolerably sacrificable and essentials purposes.
5.Subservient discourseIt seems of great illustrative to observe that one body of discourse may be subservient to another. Let us call the former a
subservient body of discourse, or simply a subservient discourse; and call the latter a
principal body of discourse, or simply a principle discourse.
5
Among the various kinds of subservient discourse, there is a special
kind that deserves our attention. I have in mind an exemplification. A
body of discourse D1 exemplifies another body of discourse D if D1
designates a special case of what is said in D in order to help
establish or clarify or facilitate the understanding of what is said in
D. In this case, what primarily concerns the author of D1 is D rather than D1 itself.
For example, in ¡±15.1 of his Principles ([3]or [4]), Leonard begins the discussion with the following two paragraphs:
(A)¡qE How many
figures appear in figure 5, below? It depends on what the word "figures"
means. If "figures" means "shapes", then the correct answer is: two, a
triangular shape and a rectangular shape. But if "figures" means
"drawings", the correct answer is: three, the left-hand one, the middle
one, and the right-hand one.¡r
6 (B)¡qE The above
question illustrates a kind of ambiguity that is liable to attach to all
sorts of words used in dealing with language. Among these possibly
ambiguous words are "letter", "word", "phrase", "expression",
"sentence", and "sign". For example , one might ask, how many words
appear in the first paragraph(A) of this section? The correct answer
depends on what is meant by "word". If "words" means "dictionary words",
then the correct answer is thirty-four. But if "words" means "printings
of words", then the correct answer is fifty-four.¡r
The ending sentences of paragraph (B),
beginning with 'For example,' may be said to be a subservient discourse
with respect to the preceding sentences of that same paragraph. The
former help to male the latter understood.
Suppose, now, we translate these two
paragraphs (A) and (B) into another language, say, German. It could well
be the case that the German translation (A') of the first paragraph
contains not thirty-four dictionary words and fifty-four printings of
words but rather twenty-eight dictionary words and forty-one printings
of words. Now, in order to translate the second paragraph (B) into
German (B'), we could not directly say that there are
vier-und-dreissig dictionary words and
vier-und-funfzig printings of words in the previous paragraph. We should say instead that there are
acht-und-zwznzig dictionary words and
ein-und-vierzig printings of words in that previous paragraph. In short, sub-discourse
(1)¡qE If "words"
means "dictionary words", then the correct answer is thirty-four. But if
"words" means "printings of words", then the correct answer is
fifty-four.¡ris not synonynmous in any degree of strength with its
translation
(2)¡qG If "words"
means "dictionary words", then the correct answer is twenty-eight. But
if "words" means "printings of words", then the correct answer is
forty-one.¡r
7This example serves to point out that
translation is not necessarily a synonymy-preserving mapping between two
bodies of discourse, as is commonly and common-sensically assumed or
understood to be the case. It is, however, not difficult to realize that
sub-discourse (2) as occurring in discourse (B') with respect to (A')
in German serves the same
essential purpose(s) as sub-discourse (1) as occurring in discourse (B) with respect to (A) in English. In other words, they serve
essentially the same illustrative purpose with respect to their previous paragraphs. Hence, we can say in conformity with
R1b that translation is an essential purpose-preserving mapping between two bodies of discourse.
6.A counter-example to the pragmatic theory of meaning Here we seem to face a problem. That is,
we may throw a doubt upon the claim that pragmatic considerations can
provide a sufficient condition for a theory of meaning. According to
this theory, meaning (of a deliberate sign) is defined in terms of
pragmatic characterization. A body of discourse has such a meaning (or,
such and such meanings) if it serves for a certain author to accomplish
thus and thus a purpose (or, thus and thus purposes). And two bodies of
discourse have exactly the same meaning(s) if and only if they serve
exactly the same purpose(s). But now we seem to encounter a counter
example. While (1)in English and (2) in German serve essentially the
same purpose(s), they, nevertheless, have different meanings.
In view of the problem resulting from the
translation of (A) and (B) into (A') and (B') above, we may ask the
question what makes the translation under consideration become not a
synonymy-preserving mapping? It is obvious that (A) and (B) are on
different language levels, and when we make a translation for (A) and
(B) into (A') and (B') respectively, then (B') is not talking exactly
about the same object as (B) is, although (B') is connected with (A') in
exactly the same way as (B) is to (A). This observation may suggest
people to think that our counter-example to the pragmatic theory of
meaning is nothing but apparent, or rather it is only a very special
case. For example, we can avoid the above difficulty if Leonard writes
the following (C) instead of (B) above.
(C)¡qE¡KFor
example, one might ask: How many words appear in the first paragraph of
this section? The correct answer depends on what is meant by "words". If
"words" means "dictionary words", then we get one answer; but if
"words" means "printings of words", then we get another answer¡KI leave
it to the readers to count out the exact number for each of the two
answers.¡r
Then, the difficulty seems to disappear.
But it would seem more appropriate to say that in this special case, the
difficulty is suppressed rather than disappearing, because it always
has the danger that the difficulty may in some situation or other
reappear and come up onto the surface.
Because of this difficulty, people may
tend to make a proposal to the effect that in a theory of translation
let the language-level distinction be taken into consideration. They may
even propose to say that if we have two bodies of discourse D1 and D2, D2 taking D1 as its subject-matter, then in our translation D1' and D'2, we shall not call D'2 a translation of D2, but rather that D'2 is an explication or illustration or something of this sort to D1' in view of D2.
Take our previous example, (B') in German will not be said to be a
translation of (B) in English, but an illustration of (A') in view of
(B). But in practice this amounts to the fact that we translate (B) into
(B') with the necessary corrections or amendments in the light of (A').
Therefore, it seems to me that we can call (B') a translation of (B) in
the light of (A') as well.
In case we rewrite D2 into D'2 without a radical change of the content of D2,
it seems without any harm at all to think that the one is a translation
of the other. For instance, in (C) and (C') above, we make no change as
to the content of (C) in (C'), (C') can be said to be a translation of
C, despite the fact that (C') is talking about (A') rather than about
(A) , which (C) is talking about. However, I am also inclined to think
of (B') in our example as a translation of (B) although in (B') we did
make some substantial changes in the content of (B), namely, we change
"thirty-four" into "twenty-eight", and "fifty-four" into "forty-one".
7.Other examples of non-synonymous translationThere are cases of translation in which we
make a radical change in resulting body of discourse with respect to
the content of the original body of discourse. For example, if Quine
lectures at Harvard University to make a distinction between the use and
mention of a linguistic expression, he may say something as follows:
(3)¡qE¡Kas we know very well that Boston is a big city, but 'Boston' is a six-lettered word.¡r
Now, suppose a Japanese translator wants to translate (3) into the Japanese language, he might render it in this way:
(4)¡qJ¡Kas we know very well that Tokyo is a big city, but 'Tokyo' is a two-word phrase.¡r
8
He does this because in the Japanese language there is no way to talk
about the alphabetical letters comparable to that in English.
There might be people who would like to
think that (4) is not a translation of (3), but, rather, that if (3) is
subservient to, say, D, (4) to D'
9
, then (4) is an illustration of D. The main reason for refusing to
call (4) a translation of (3) is that (4) and (3) talk about entirely
different terms, one about the city Boston and the word 'Boston', and
the other about the city Tokyo and the phrase¡qJ 'Tokyo'¡r. But since (4) serves the same essential purposes as (3),
R1b would justify our calling (4) a translation of (3).
8.Hypothetical intentionWe have followed Leonard in saying that to
ask what an utterance means as a deliberate sign is to ask what its
speaker was intending to accomplish by making that utterance. Now, in
talking about translation we need to make a minor change in the above
affirmation. Let us say that to ask what purpose(s) a body of discourse,
as a string of deliberate signs, serves to single out is to ask what
its author
would be intending if he
should make that body of discourse.
To take the example of Quine's lecturing
in Japan, what we claim is the following. If he should go to give a
lecture in the Japanese language at Tokyo University, in making a
distinction between the use and the mention of an expression, it is very
likely that he would take Tokyo (and¡qJ
'Tokyo'¡r) rather than Boston (and 'Boston') as an example. Hence when
we translate (3) in English to (4) in Japanese, although these two
strings of signs are not synonymous, they can, nevertheless, serve
essentially
the same purpose(s).It is true that there may be more than one, or even
many, bodies of discourse other than (4) in Japanese which can be used
to serve the same purpose(s). But our point is to think of the
translator as being able in one way or another to look into the mind of
the original author., and discover what he would be most likely to say
or to write under that context in question. If Quine should lecture in
the Japanese language at Tokyo University, he would probably take Tokyo
as an example; if he should lecture in the Chinese language at National
Taiwan University, he would probably take Formosa or Taipei as an
example. Although we do not possess any way by which we can effectively
say exactly what body of discourse an author would be likely to use of
he should write or speak in a certain circumstance, nevertheless, we
must choose a string of signs which can do essentially the same job as
the author's original string of signs. That is to say, these two bodies
of discourse must be able to serve essentially the same purpose(s) as we
defined above. If we say that a body of discourse D uttered by an
author serves to signify the purpose(s) intended by him, then let us say
that a translation D' of D signifies the purpose(s)
hypothetically intended by the original author.
Now, we may write our pragmatic rule for translation as the following:
R1c. A body of discourse D' is a
translation of another body of discourse D if and only if D' signifies
the purpose(s) hypothetically intended by the author of D while D
signifies the purpose(s) intended by him.
9.Linguistically dependent elements and translatabilityWe have so far exhibited that in the case
of subservient discourse there may be purpose-preserving but not
synonymy-preserving translation. And furthermore, we have extended the
notion of purpose to cover those case in which the so-called
hypothetical intention is involved. However, these are not the only
cases in which translation preserves purpose but does not preserve
synonymy. The reason that we take those subservient discourses into
consideration is that in that circumstance we are able to determine more
easily what purpose may be intended or hypothetically intended by an
author in uttering a string of signs. We do this simply by referring to
the discourse to which this one is subservient. But how about a string
of signs which is not apparently subservient to any other string of
signs in a particular context? The situation, I think, is similar.
In order to see the purpose-preserving but
not synonymy-preserving translation more convincingly, let us take an
example from the emotive use of language. Suppose in a certain nlaguag
l, the sentence
(5)¡q
l He is a pig.¡r
has a very bad derogatory implication, but the sentence
(6)¡q
l He is a dog.¡r
has little or even no emotive association at all. Suppose, further, that in another language
l1, the reverse is the case, that is
(6')¡q
l1 He is a dog.¡r
has derogatory implication, while
(5')¡q
l1 He is a pig.¡r
has little or none at all, Now in order to translate (5) in
l into another sentence in
l1,
I would think that we translate it into (6') rather than into (5').
Because if we translate (5) into (5'), then, it may read somehow like
(7) He is maximally satisfiable class of wffs.
which makes little sense in that context in
l1.
As we may have suggested above, the
translation of any body of discourse which talks about something that is
at-least-in-part dependent on the linguistic element creates the
difficulty we are talking in this paper. But this does not necessarily
create an unconquerable task as we showed above. In some cases, however,
we may not be quite sure exactly how much we can do. For instance,
ambiguity is something which is associated with linguistic elements. We
may have an ambiguous expression in this language but no equivalent
expression in another language. In case we want to make use of the very
fact of ambiguity in a string of signs N, we can hardly find a
legitimate translation N', in another language in which no string of
signs has the corresponding ambiguity. The following is an example. A
British or an American student who is puzzled by philosophy may utter
something like this:
(S)¡qE What is mind? no matter; what is matter? never mind.¡r
This string if signs says something which conjoins in one way or another the following two strings:
(S1) No matter what mind is; and never mind what matter is. And
(S2) What is mind is not matter, and what is matter is not mind.
But neither (S1) nor (S2)
taken separately signifies what (S) signifies. The interesting point
here lies in the fact that in (S) the author artfully uses the ambiguity
associated with words like 'no matter' and 'never mind' not occurring
isolatedly but within that context. If in trying to translate (S) into
another language, say, Chinese, we may not have the same ambiguity
associated with the corresponding words. Or to put it in another way, we
may translate (S1) into a certain (S'1) and (S2) into a certain (S'2) without any difficulty, but (S'1) and (S'2)
cannot be conjoined into an (S') in the same way in which (S) had been
done. Therefore, what can be signified by (S) may not be signified by
(S'). That is to say, (S) and (S') may not signify the same purpose.
Hence (S') is not a translation of (S).
But how about the following possibility?
Suppose that instead of 'no matter' and 'never mind' in Chinese, we have
'no Y' and 'never Z' which mean "no matter" and "never mind"
respectively. But when we take 'Y'and 'Z' isolatedly, they mean
"analytic" and "synthetic" respectively. Consider the following
sentence:
(S")¡qc What is z, no Y; what is Y, never Z.¡r
I would say that this could signify the purpose (s) hypothetically
intended by the author of (S). That is to say, if the author is to utter
in the Chinese what is said in (S), he will say (S") rather than
something else. Hence, according to our R1c, (S") is a legitimate
translation of (S). This is not synonymy-preserving, but it is
purpose-preserving.
At this point, we may raise the question:
Is there, then, anything which is not translatable? The answer seems to
me in the positive. Actually, the example we just gave is entirely
fictitious. In the Chinese language there is no way to render (S), even
approximately, as we suggested above.
Another example is this. If we want to
make use of the ambiguity in¡up v q v r¡vwritten in so-called standard
notation, there is no way to render it into Polish notation and still
preserve the ambiguity therein.
10.Culturo-historical aspect of a state of affairsWe may have, so far, created an impression
that the problem of translation we are dealing with comes from the fact
that different language possess different peculiarities. But it is
rather difficult to say to what extent the relevant peculiarities are
exclusively linguistic. For example, we might be inclined to think that
we may translate a string of signs in the language used by this group
into another string of signs in another language used by another group.
But this statement is not clear in many respects.
For example, in the island of Tahiti young
people of the opposite sex express their affection not by touching
their lips, buy by touching their noses. Let us call it
nunu. Now, suppose a line of a poem written by a Tahitian poet t run somewhat as follows.
(T)¡qT Romeo nunus Juliet gently without a word of sorrow.¡r
when we try to translate (T) into English, we may have a misgiving as wheher to render it into
(T')¡qE Romeo kisses Juliet gently without a word of sorrow.¡r
or not. We cannot translate (T) into, e.g.,
(T")¡qE Romeo presses his nose on Juliet's gently without a word of sorrow.¡r
because the phrase 'presses his nose on' in English does not carry the
impression of expressing his affection. Of course, the simplest and
commonest way to do this is to transplant the word "nunu", perhaps
written in italic, into the vocabulary of English. But this is not a
translation between the Tahitian language and English. It involves the
enlargement of English vocabulary by transplanting the word 'nunu'
before we carry out the translation.
In this case, the difficulty seems to lie
in the fact that between these two groups of people, namely, the
Tahitians and, say, the Americans there is no common state of affairs at
that point. Although pressing of lips and pressing of noses taken
physically are, or could be, state of affairs common to them; but when
taken otherwise, usually culturo-historically, this is not the case.
This example, I hope, may help indicate
the following claim. That we should not think of the so-called states of
affairs as absolutely independent of the culturo-historical background
of a certain group of people. States of affairs are construed via the
employment of language. This makes a state of affairs being talkable or
enumerable and what not. But the very act of construing a state of
affairs via the use of language casts a cultural veil over it.
Therefore, I would think that a state of affairs is not purely physical,
it is also in a sense cultural.
However, this is not to be taken as
implying that we cannot isolate the purely physical aspect of a state of
affairs, e.g. pressing noses, from the culturo-historical aspect of it,
e.g., expressing affection by pressing noses. What we claim here is
that in calling a certain state of affairs, say pressing noses, by a
certain name, say, nunu, we already subsume the state of affairs under
our cultural casting. And different cultural groups may construe a state
of affairs in quite different ways.
11.Unit of translation and equi-legitimate translationsIn doing translation, we proceed by
rewriting a body of discourse into another body of discourse. Now a
question may be raised as to how large a body of discourse we must take
as a unit to do translation. Do we translate word by word, or do we
translate sentence by sentence, or even paragraph by paragraph, and so
on? There are people, notably Mates ([5],p.112), who affirm that the
unit of translation is arbitrary to the extent that the translator
thinks which way will produce the most satisfactory result. Hence, the
unit of translation may be a word, it may be a sentence, or, it may be a
paragraph, and so on. Although this affirmation does not conflict with
the position we take here, however, we can have a more definite answer.
Since we have a pragmatic concept of translation, or more specifically,
since we affirm that translation is a purpose-reserving mapping between a
body of discourse and another body of discourse, and since the purpose
intended by the author can only be conveyed successfully through the use
of a sentence or a sentence equivalent, we can conclude that it is a
sentence or a sentence equivalent that is the simplest unit of
translation. However, as can be inferred from what we have said so far,
we frequently take into account , or make reference to, other more
extensive units, such as a sub-paragraph consisting of several sentences
or a whole paragraph, or, sometimes, even several paragraphs. This is
especially the case when we try to determine the purpose or purposes
hypothetically intended by an author.
When we talk about translating a body of discourse D into another body of discourse D', we call D'
a translation of D rather than
the
translation of D. We do this because it often happens that between two
different languages, for a certain body of discourse in one language,
there may be more than one body of discourse in the other language
purpose-preservingly corresponding to it. Generally speaking, to a
certain body of discourse D in
l, there may be D'
1, D'
2, D'
3,...,D'
n (n¡Ù1) in
l1 corresponding to it as legitimate translations. Let£Fbe a set consisting of all the D'1 to D'
n, then we may call every member D'
I(i¡Øn) of£F an equi-legitimate translation to another member D'
j (
j¡Øn and
j¡Úi) of£F.Or in other words, we may simply call any member D'
I of£Fone of the equi-legitimate translations of D.
However, in saying that D'
i and D'
j are two equi-legitimate translations of D according to the above definition, we are not saying that D'
i and D'
j
are equivalent in the sense that they preserve exactly the same
purposes intended in D in exactly the same manner. That is, every single
purpose intended in D which is preserved by D'
i is at the same time preserved by D'
j in the same way, and vice versa. It may well be the case that there are some (non-essential) purpose(s) preserved by D'
i but not preserved by D'
j , or some purpose(s) preserved by D'
j but not by D'
i.But
we do claim that they must preserve essentially the same purpose(s),
i.e., those unsacrificable purpose(s), which is (are) intended or
hypothetically intended by the author of D, in order to be the members
of£F. In short, each member D'
i of£Fshould thus preserve the purpose(s) of D in order to be a translation of D at all.
12.Full and partial translation and grades of translationAlong with the line of reasoning given in
this paper, we can distinguish between a full translation and a partial
translation of a body of discourse in the following way. Let D be the
original body of discourse, p1, p2, p3,...pk
(k¡Ù1) be the unsacrificable purposes intended by its author in D, and
D' be a translation of D. Suppose that D' preserves every item of p1 to pk, then D'is a full translation of D; otherwise, if D preserves at least one but not all of p1 to pk, then it is a partial translation of D. Hence we can establish the notion of the degrees or the grades of translation.
This analysis is especially helpful when
we deal with a body f discourse which is intentionally ambiguous, i.e.,
with more than one unsacrificable purpose intended in it.
But the distinction between a full and a
partial translation is always relative according as what a series of
purposes the author of a body of discourse will count as essential or
unsacrificable. For example, in section 9 of this paper, (S")can be a
full or a partial translation of (S) depending upon how many purposes
the author of (S) will count as essential. But neither (S1) nor (S2) will be a partial translation, let alone a full translation, of (S) as it is taken conventionally.
References
1.Leonard, Henry S. "Authorship and Purpose"
Philosophy of Science, vol.26, no.4 (1959), pp.277-294.
2.______ "Interrogatives, Imperatives, Truth, Falsity and Lies."
Philosophy of Science. vol.26, no.3 (1959). Pp.172-186.
3.______
Principles of Reasoning. Dover Publications, Inc. New York, 1967. Revised edition of [4].
4.______
Principles of Right Reason. Henry Holt and Co., New York, 1957.
5.______ "Synonymy and Systematic Definition."
The Monist. vol, 51, no.1 (1967)
6.Mates, Benson. "Synonymity." In Linsky, L.,
Semantics and the Philosophy of Language. The University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1952, pp111-136.
Hsiu-Hwang Ho
Stanislaus State College
*The author wishes to dedicate this article to the
late Professor Henry S. Leonard, and thereby to express his indebtness
to him. Professor Leonard read two earlier versions of this paper and
expressed some invaluable criticism. However, not every point he
discussed is fully accommodated in the present version. Hence, the
author alone is responsible for the inadequacies or mistakes that may be
found in it.
The paper was written in 1968 and then was read at the philosophical club of Michigan State University.
1.Cf.[3] or [4], ¡±¡±14.3-14.6
2.For a definition of a language, see [5].
3.Cf.[3] or [4],. ¡±¡±14.3-14.6; also [2], pp.175-181.
4.Cf. [3] or [4], unit12, [2],pp.175-177, and [1], pp.278-283.
5.This distinction is made in a relative sense.
6.I use '¡q
l...¡r'to indicate that '...'is written in language
l. And I use 'E', 'G', 'C', 'J', and 'T' to stand for English, German, Chinese, Japanese, and Tahitian, respectively.
7.On strength of synonymy, see[5], ¡±9.
8.In Japan, people write the name of Tokyo as 'ªF¨Ê' which consists of two words.
9.We do not specify D here, but it may be
thought of as a paragraph talking about the use-mention distinction.
And D' here being a translation of D.
Abstract
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