What Is an Author?
Michel Foucault
, 1969
The coming into being of the notion of "author" constitutes the privileged moment of individualization in the history of ideas, knowledge, literature, philosophy, and the sciences. Even today, when we reconstruct the history of a concept, literary genre, or school of philosophy, such categories seem relatively weak, secondary, and super imposed scansions in comparison with the solid and fundamental unit of the author and the work.
I shall not offer here a sociohistorical analysis of the author's persona. Certainly, it would be worth examining how the author became individualized in a culture like ours, what status he has been given, at what moment studies of authenticity and attribution began, in what kind of system of valorization the author was involved, at what point we began to recount the lives of authors rather than of heroes, and how this fundamental category of "the-man-and-his-work criticism" began. For the moment, however, I want to deal solely with the relationship between text and author and with the manner in which the text points to this figure that, at least in appearance; is outside it and antecedes it.
Beckett nicely formulates the theme with which I would like to begin: "What does it matter who is speaking;' someone said; 'what does it matter who is speaking.'" In this indifference appears one of the fundamental ethical principles of contemporary writing [écriture].
I say "ethical" because this indifference is really not a trait characterizing the manner in which one speaks and writes but, rather, a kind of immanent rule, taken up over and over again, never fully applied, not designating writing as something completed, but dominating it as a practice. Since it is too familiar to require a lengthy analysis, this immanent rule can be adequately illustrated here by tracing two of its major themes.
First of all, we can say that today's writing has freed itself from the theme of expression. Referring only to itself; but without being restricted to the confines of its interiority, writing is identified with its own unfolded exteriority. This means that it is an interplay of signs arranged less according to its signified content than according to the very nature of the signifier. Writing unfolds like a game [jeu] that invariably goes beyond its own rules and transgresses its limits. In writing, the point is not to manifest or exalt the act of writing, nor is it to pin a subject within language; it is, rather, a question of creating a space into which the writing subject constantly disappears.
The second theme, writing's relationship with death, is even more familiar. This link subverts an old tradition exemplified by the Greek epic, which was intended
to perpetuate the immortality of the hero: if he was willing to die young, it was so that his life, consecrated and magnified by death, might pass into immortality; the narrative then redeemed this accepted death. In another way, the motivation, as well as the theme and the pretext of Arabian narratives – such as The Thousand and One Nights – was also the eluding of death: one spoke, telling stories into the early morning, in order to forestall death, to postpone the day of reckoning that would silence the narrator. Scheherazade's narrative is an effort, renewed each night, to keep death outside the circle of life.
Our culture has metamorphosed this idea of narrative, or writing, as something designed to ward off death. Writing has become linked to sacrifice, even to the sacrifice of life: it is now a voluntary effacement that does not need to be represented in books, since it is brought about in the writer's very existence. The work, which once had the duty of providing immortality, now possesses the right to kill, to be its author's murderer, as in the cases of Flaubert, Proust, and Kafka. That is not all, however: this relationship between writing and death is also manifested in the effacement of the writing subject's individual characteristics. Using all the contrivances that he sets up between himself and what he writes, the writing subject cancels out the signs of his particular individuality. As a result, the mark of the writer is reduced to nothing more than the singularity of his absence; he must assume the role of the dead man in the game of writing.
None of this is recent; criticism and philosophy took note of the disappearance – or death - of the author some time ago. But the consequences of their discovery of it have not been sufficiently examined, nor has its import been accurately measured. A certain number of notions that are intended to replace the privileged position of the author actually seem to preserve that privilege and suppress the real meaning of his disappearance. I shall examine two of these notions, both of great importance today.
The first is the idea of the work [oeuvre]. It is a very familiar thesis that the task of criticism is not to bring out the work's relationships with the author, nor to reconstruct through the text a thought or experience, but rather to analyze the work through its structure, its architecture, its intrinsic form, and the play of its internal relationships. At this point, however, a problem arises: What is a work? What is this curious unity which we designate as a work? Of what elements is it composed? Is it not what an author has written? Difficulties appear immediately. If an individual were not an author, could we say that what he wrote, said, left behind in his papers, or what has been collected of his remarks, could be called a "work"? When Sade was not considered an author, what was the status of his papers? Simply rolls of paper onto which he ceaselessly uncoiled his fantasies during his imprisonment.
Even when an individual has been accepted as an author, we must still ask whether everything that he wrote, said, or left behind is part of his work. The problem is both theoretical and technical. When undertaking the publication of
Nietzsche's works, for example, where should one stop? Surely everything must be published, but what is "everything"? Everything that Nietzsche himself published, certainly. And what about the rough drafts for his works? Obviously. The plans for his aphorisms? Yes. The deleted passages and the notes at the bottom of the page? Yes. What if, within a workbook filled with aphorisms, one finds a reference, the notation of a meeting or of an address, or a laundry list: is it a work, or not? Why not? And so on, ad infinitum. How can one define a work amid the millions of traces left by someone after his death? A theory of the work does not exist, and the empirical task of those who naively undertake the editing of works often suffers in the absence of such a theory.
We could go even further. Does The Thousand and One Nights constitute a work? What about Clement of Alexandria's Miscellanies or Diogenes La?rtes' Lives? A multitude of questions arises with regard to this notion of the work. Consequently, it is not enough to declare that we should do without the writer (the author) and study the work itself. The word work and the unity that it designates are probably as problematic as the status of the author's individuality. Another notion which has hindered us from taking full measure of the author's disappearance, blurring and concealing the moment of this effacement and subtly preserving the author's existence, is the notion of writing [écriture]. When rigorously applied, this notion should allow us not only to circumvent references to the author, but also to situate his recent absence. The notion of writing, as currently employed, is concerned with neither the act of writing nor the indication – be it symptom or sign – of a meaning that someone might have wanted to express. We try, with great effort, to imagine the general condition of each text, the condition of both the space in which it is dispersed and the time in which it unfolds.
In current usage, however, the notion of writing seems to transpose the empirical characteristics of the author into a transcendental anonymity. We are content to efface the more visible marks of the author's empiricity by playing off, one against the other, two ways of characterizing writing, namely, the critical and the religious approaches. Giving writing a primal status seems to be a way of retranslating, in transcendental terms, both the theological affirmation of its sacred character and the critical affirmation of its creative character. To admit that writing is, because of the very history that it made possible, subject to the test of oblivion and repression, seems to represent, in transcendental terms, the religious principle of the hidden meaning (which requires interpretation) and the critical principle of implicit signification, silent determinations, and obscured contents (which give rise to commentary). To imagine writing as absence seems to be a simple repetition, in transcendental terms, of both the religious principle of inalterable and yet never fulfilled tradition, and the aesthetic principle of the work's survival, its perpetuation beyond the author's death, and its enigmatic excess in relation to him.
This usage of the notion of writing runs the risk of maintaining the author's privileges under the protection of the a priori: it keeps alive, in the gray light of neutralization, the interplay of those representations that formed a particular image of the author. The author's disappearance, which, since Mallarmé, has been a constantly recurring event, is subject to a series of transcendental barriers. There seems to be an important dividing line between those who believe that they can still locate today's discontinuities [ruptures] in the historico-transcendental tradition of the nineteenth century and those who try to free themselves once and for all from that tradition.
§
It is not enough, however, to repeat the empty affirmation that the author has disappeared. For the same reason, it is not enough to keep repeating that God and man have died a common death. Instead, we must locate the space left empty by the author's disappearance, follow the distribution of gaps and breaches, and watch for the openings this disappearance uncovers.
First, we need to clarify briefly the problems arising from the use of the author's name. What is an author's name? How does it function? Far from offering a solution, I shall only indicate some of the difficulties that it presents.
The author's name is a proper name, and therefore it raises the problems common to all proper names. (Here I refer to Searle's analyses, among others.') Obviously, one cannot turn a proper name into a pure and simple reference. It has other than indicative functions: more than an indication, a gesture, a finger pointed at someone, it is the equivalent of a description. When one says "Aristotle," one employs a word that is the equivalent of one, or a series, of definite descriptions, such as "the author of the Analytics," "the founder of ontology," and so forth. One cannot stop there, however, because a proper name does not have just one signification. When we discover that Arthur Rimbaud did not write La Chasse spirituelle, we cannot pretend that the meaning of this proper name, or that of the author, has been altered. The proper name and the author's name are situated between the two poles of description and designation: they must have a certain link with what they name, but one that is neither entirely in the mode of designation nor in that of description; it must be a specific link. However - and it is here that the particular difficulties of the author's name arise - the links between the proper name and the individual named and between the author's name and what it names are not isomorphic and do not function in the same way. There are several differences.
If for example, Pierre Dupont does not have blue eyes, or was not born in Paris, or is not a doctor, the name Pierre Dupont will still always refer to the same person, such things do not modify the link of designation. The problems raised by the author's name are much more complex, however. If I discover that Shakespeare was not born in the house we visit today, this is a modification that,
obviously, will not alter the functioning of the author's name. But if we proved that Shakespeare did not write those sonnets which pass for his, that would constitute a significant change and affect the manner in which the author's name functions. If we proved that Shakespeare wrote Bacon's Organon by showing that the same author wrote both the works of Bacon and those of Shakespeare, that would be a third type of change that would entirely modify the functioning of the author's name. The author's name is not, therefore, just a proper name like the rest. Many other facts point out the paradoxical singularity of the author's name. To say that Pierre Dupont does not exist is not at all the same as saying that Homer or Hermes Trismegistus did not exist. In the first case, it means that no one has the name Pierre Dupont; in the second, it means that several people were mixed together under one name, or that the true author had none of the traits traditionally ascribed to the personae of Homer or Hermes. To say that X's real name is actually Jacques Durand instead of Pierre Dupont is not the same as saying that Stendhal's name was Henri Beyle. One could also question the meaning and functioning of propositions like "Bourbaki is so-and-so, so-and-so, and so-forth," and "Victor Eremite, Climacus, Anticlimacus, Prater Taciturnus, Constantine Constantius, all of these are Kierkegaard."
These differences may result from the fact that an author's name is not simply an element in a discourse (capable of being either subject or object, of being replaced by a pronoun, and the like); it performs a certain role with regard to narrative discourse, assuring a classificatory function. Such a name permits one to group together a certain number of texts, define them, differentiate them from and contrast them to others. In addition, it establishes a relationship among the texts. Hermes Trismegistus did not exist, nor did Hippocrates - in the sense that Balzac existed - but the fact that several texts have been placed under the same name indicates that there has been established among them a relationship of homogeneity, filiation, authentication of some texts by the use of others, reciprocal explication, or concomitant utilization. The author's name serves to characterize a certain mode of being of discourse: the fact that the discourse has an author's name, that one can say "this was written by so-and-so" or "so-and-so is its author," shows that this discourse is not ordinary everyday speech that merely comes and goes, not something that is immediately consumable. On the contrary, it is a speech that must be received in a certain mode and that, in a given culture, must receive a certain status.
It would seem that the author's name, unlike other proper names, does not pass from the interior of a discourse to the real and exterior individual who produced it; instead, the name seems always to be present, marking off the edges of the text, revealing, or at least characterizing, its mode of being. The author's name manifests the appearance of a certain discursive set and indicates the status of this discourse within a society and a culture. It has no legal status, nor is it located in the fiction of the work; rather, it is located in the break that founds a certain discursive construct and its very particular mode of being. As a result, we
could say that in a civilization like our own there area certain number of discourses endowed with the "author function" while others are deprived of it. A private letter may well have a signer – it does not have an author; a contract may well have a guarantor – it does not have an author. An anonymous text posted on a wall probably has an editor – but not an author. The author function is therefore characteristic of the mode of existence, circulation, and functioning of certain discourses within a society.
§
Let us analyze this "author function" as we have just described it. In our culture, how does one characterize a discourse containing the author function? In what way is this discourse different from other discourses? If we limit our remarks to the author of a book or a text, we can isolate four different characteristics.
First of all, discourses are objects of appropriation. The form of ownership from which they spring is of a rather particular type, one that has been codified for many years. We should note that, historically, this type of ownership has always been subsequent to what one might call penal appropriation. Texts, books, and discourses really began to have authors (other than mythical, sacralized and sacralizing figures) to the extent that authors became subject to punishment, that is, to the extent that discourses could be transgressive. In our culture (and doubtless in many others), discourse was not originally a product, a thing, a kind of goods; it was essentially an act - an act placed in the bipolar field of the sacred and the profane, the licit and the illicit, the religious and the blasphemous. Historically, it was a gesture fraught with risks before becoming goods caught up in a circuit of ownership.
Once a system of ownership for texts came into being, once strict rules concerning author's rights, author-publisher relations, rights of reproduction, and related matters were enacted - at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century - the possibility of transgression attached to the act of writing took on, more and more, the form of an imperative peculiar to literature. It is as if the author, beginning with the moment at which he was placed in the system of property that characterizes our society, compensated for the status that he thus acquired by rediscovering the old bipolar field of discourse, systematically practicing transgression and thereby restoring danger to a writing that was now guaranteed the benefits of ownership.
The author function does not affect all discourses in a universal and constant way, however. In our civilization, it has not always been the same types of texts that have required attribution to an author. There was a time when the texts we today call "literary" (narratives, stories, epics, tragedies, comedies) were accepted, put into circulation, and valorized without any question about the identity of their author, their anonymity caused no difficulties since their ancientness, whether real or imagined, was regarded as a sufficient guarantee of
their status. On the other hand, those texts we now would call scientific - those dealing with cosmology and the heavens, medicine and illnesses, natural sciences and geography - were accepted in the Middle Ages, and accepted as "true," only when marked with the name of their author. "Hippocrates said," "Pliny recounts," were not really formulas of an argument based on authority; they were the markers inserted in discourses that were supposed to be received as statements of demonstrated truth.
A switch takes place in the seventeenth or eighteenth century. Scientific discourses began to be received for themselves, in the anonymity of an established or always redemonstrable truth; their membership in a systematic ensemble, and not the reference to the individual who produced them, stood as their guarantee. The author function faded away, and the inventor's name served only to christen a theorem, proposition, particular effect, property, body, group of elements, or pathological syndrome. By the same token, literary discourses came to be accepted only when endowed with the author function. We now ask of each poetic or fictional text: From where does it come, who wrote it, when, under what circumstances, or beginning with what design? The meaning ascribed to it and the status or value accorded it depend on the manner in which we answer these questions. And if a text should be discovered in a state of anonymity – whether as a consequence of an accident or the author's explicit wish – the game becomes one of rediscovering the author. Since literary anonymity is not tolerable, we can accept it only in the guise of an enigma. As a result, the author function today plays an important role in our view of literary works. (These are obviously generalizations that would have to be refined insofar as recent critical practice is concerned. Criticism began some time ago to treat works according to their genre and type, following the recurrent elements that are enfigured in them, as proper variations around an invariant that is no longer the individual creator. Even so, if in mathematics reference to the author is barely anything any longer but a manner of naming theorems or sets of propositions, in biology and medicine the indication of the author and the date of his work playa rather different role. It is not simply a manner of indicating the source, but of providing a certain index of "reality" in relation to the techniques and objects of experience made use of in a particular period and in such-and-such a laboratory.)
The third characteristic of this author function is that it does not develop spontaneously as the attribution of a discourse to an individual. It is, rather, the result of a complex operation that constructs a certain being of reason that we call "author." Critics doubtless try to give this being of reason a realistic status, by discerning, in the individual, a "deep" motive, a "creative" power, or a "design," the milieu in which writing originates. Nevertheless, these aspects of an individual which we designate as making him an author are only a projection, in more or less psychologizing terms, of the operations we force texts to undergo, the connections we make, the traits we establish as pertinent, the continuities we recognize, or the exclusions we practice. All these operations vary according to periods and types of discourse. We do not-construct a "philosophical author" as
we do a "poet," just as in the eighteenth century one did not construct a novelist as we do today. StilI, we can find through the ages certain constants in the rules of author construction.
It seems, for example that the manner in which literary criticism once defined the author – or, rather, constructed the figure of the author beginning with existing texts and discourses – is directly derived from the manner in which Christian tradition authenticated (or rejected) the texts at its disposal. In order to "rediscover" an author in a work, modern criticism uses methods similar to those that Christian exegesis employed when trying to prove the value of a text by its author's saintliness. In De Viris Mustribus, Saint Jerome explains that homonymy is not sufficient to identify legitimately authors of more than one work: different individuals could have had the same name, or one man could have, illegitimately, borrowed another's patronymic. The name as an individual trademark is not enough when one works within a textual tradition.
How, then, can one attribute several discourses to one and the same author? How can one use the author function to determine if one is dealing with one or several individuals? Saint Jerome proposes four criteria: (i) if among several books attributed to an author one is inferior to the others, it must be withdrawn from the list of the author's works (the author is therefore defined as a constant level of value); (2) the same should be done if certain texts contradict the doctrine expounded in the author's other works (the author is thus defined as a field of conceptual or theoretical coherence); (3) one must also exclude works that are written in a different style, containing words and expressions not ordinarily found in the writer's production (the author is here conceived as a stylistic unity); (4) finally, passages quoting statements made or mentioning events that occurred after the author's death must be regarded as interpolated texts (the author is here seen as a historical figure at the crossroads of a certain number of events).
Modern literary criticism, even when – as is now customary – it is not concerned with questions of authentication, still defines the author in much the same way: the author provides the basis for explaining not only the presence of certain events in a work, but also their transformations, distortions, and diverse modifications (through his biography, the determination of his individual perspective, the analysis of his social position, and the revelation of his basic design). The author is also the principle of a certain unity of writing - all differences having to be resolved, at least in part, by the principles of evolution, maturation, or influence. The author also serves to neutralize the contradictions that may emerge in a series of texts: there must be - at a certain level of his thought or desire, of his consciousness or unconscious - a point where contradictions are resolved, where incompatible elements are at last tied together or organized around a fundamental or originating contradiction. Finally, the author is a particular source of expression that, in more or less completed forms, is manifested equally well, and with similar validity, in works, sketches, letters,
fragments, and so on. Clearly, Saint Jerome's four criteria of authenticity (criteria that seem totally insufficient for today's exegetes) do define the four modalities according to which modern criticism brings the author function into play.
But the author function is not a pure and simple reconstruction made secondhand from a text given as inert material. The text always contains a certain number of signs referring to the author. These signs, well known to grammarians, are personal pronouns, adverbs of time and place, and verb conjugation. Such elements do not play the same role in discourses provided with the author function as in those lacking it. In the latter, such "shifters" refer to the real speaker and to the spatio-temporal coordinates of his discourse (although certain modifications can occur, as in the operation of relating discourses in the first person). In the former, however, their role is more complex and variable. Everyone knows that, in a novel offered as a narrator's account, neither the first-person pronoun nor the present indicative refers exactly to the writer or to the moment in which he writes but, rather, to an alter ego whose distance from the author varies, often changing in the course of the work. It would be just as wrong to equate the author with the real writer as to equate him with the fictitious speaker; the author function is carried out and operates in the scission itself, in this division and this distance.
One might object that this is a characteristic peculiar to novelistic or poetic discourse, a game in which only "quasi discourses" participate. In fact, however, all discourses endowed with the author function possess this plurality of self. The self that speaks in the preface to a treatise on mathematics - and that indicates the circumstances ofthe treatise's composition identical neither in its position nor in its functioning to self speaks in the course of a demonstration, and that appears the form of "I conclude" or "I suppose." In the first case, the "I" refers to an individual without an equivalent who, in a determined place and time, completed a certain task; in the second, the "I" indicates an instance and a level of demonstration which any individual could perform provided that he accepted the same system of symbols, play of axioms and set of previous demonstrations. We could also, in the same treatise locate a third self; one that speaks to tell the work's meaning, the obstacles encountered, the results obtained, and the remaining problems; this self is situated in the field of already existing or yet-to-appear mathematical discourses. The author function is not assumed by the first of these selves at the expense of the other two, which would then be nothing more than a fictitious splitting in two of the first one. On the contrary, in these discourses the author function operates so as to effect the dispersion of these three simultaneous selves.
No doubt, analysis could discover still more characteristic traits of the author function. I will limit myself to these four, however, because they seem both the most visible and the most important. They can be summarized as follows:(1) the author function is linked to the juridical and institutional system that encompasses, determines, and articulates the universe of discourses; (2) it does
not affect all discourses in the same way at all times and in all types of civilization; (3) it is not defined by the spontaneous attribution of a discourse to its producer but, rather, by a series of specific and complex operations; (4) it does not refer purely and simply to a real individual, since it can give rise simultaneously to several selves, to several subjects - positions that can be occupied by different classes of individuals.
Up to this point I have unjustifiably limited my subject. Certainly the author function in painting, music, and other arts should have been discussed; but even supposing that we remain within the world of discourse, as I want to do, I seem to have given the term "author" much too narrow a meaning. I have discussed the author only in the limited sense of a person to whom the production of a text, a book, or a work can be legitimately attributed. It is easy to see that in the sphere of discourse one can be the author of much more than a book - one can be the author of a theory, tradition, or discipline in which other books and authors will in their turn find a place. These authors are in a position that I will call "transdiscursive." This is a recurring phenomenon – certainly as old as our civilization. Homer, Aristotle, and the Church Fathers, as well as the first mathematicians and the originators of the Hippocratic tradition, all played this role. Furthermore, in the course of the nineteenth century, there appeared in Europe another, more uncommon, kind of author, whom one should confuse with neither the "great" literary authors, nor the authors of religious texts, nor the founders of science. In a somewhat arbitrary way we shall call those who belong in this last group "founders of discursivity."
They are unique in that they are not just the authors of their own works. They have produced something else: the possibilities and the rules for the formation of other texts. In this sense they are very different, for example, from a novelist, who is, in fact, nothing more than the author of his own text. Freud is not just the author of The Interpretation of Dreams or Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious; Marx is not just the author of the Communist Manifesto or Das Kapital: they both have established an endless possibility of discourse. Obviously, it is easy to object. One might say that it is not true that the author of a novel is only the author of his own text; in a sense, he also, provided that he acquires some "importance," governs and commands more than that. To take a very simple example, one could say that Ann Radcliffe not only wrote The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne and several other novels but also made possible the appearance of the Gothic horror novel at the beginning of the nineteenth century; in that respect, her author function exceeds her own work. But I think there is an answer to this objection. These founders of discursivity (I use Marx and Freud as examples, because I believe them to be both the first and the most important cases) make possible something altogether different from what a novelist makes possible. Ann Radcliffe's texts opened the way for a certain number of resemblances and analogies which have their model or principle in her work. The latter contains characteristic signs, figures, relationships, and structures that could be reused by others. In other words, to say that Ann
Radcliffe founded the Gothic horror novel means that in the nineteenth-century Gothic novel one will find, as in Ann Radcliffe's works, the theme of the heroine caught in the trap of her own innocence, the hidden castle, the character of the black, cursed hero devoted to making the world expiate the evil done to him, and all the rest of it. On the other hand, when I speak of Marx or Freud as founders of discursivity, I mean that they made possible not only a certain number of analogies but also (and equally important) a certain number of differences. They have created a possibility for something other than their discourse, yet something belonging to what they founded. To say that Freud founded psychoanalysis does not (simply) mean that we find the concept of the libido or the technique of dream analysis in the works of Karl Abraham, or Melanie Klein; it means that Freud made possible a certain number of divergences – with respect to his own texts, concepts and hypotheses – that all arise from the psychoanalytic discourse itself. This would seem to present a new difficulty, however, or at least a new problem: is the above not true, after all, of any founder of a science, or of any author who has introduced some transformation into a science that might be called fecund? After all, Galileo made possible not only those discourses which repeated the laws he had formulated, but also statements very different from what he himself had said. If Georges Cuvier is the founder of biology, or Ferdinand de Saussure the founder of linguistics, it is not because they were imitated, nor because people have since taken up again the concept of organism or sign; it is because Cuvier made possible, to a certain extent, a theory of evolution diametrically opposed to his own fixism; it is because Saussure made possible a generative grammar radically different from his structural analyses. Superficially, then, the initiation of discursive practices appears similar to the founding of any scientific endeavor.
Still, there is a difference, and a notable one. In the case of a science, the act that founds it is on an equal footing with its future transformations; this act becomes in some respects part of the set of modifications that I makes possible. Of course, this belonging can take several forms. In the future development of a science, the founding act may appear as little more than a particular instance of a more general phenomenon that unveils itself in the process. It can also turn out to be marred by intuition and empirical bias; one must then reformulate it, making it the object of a certain number of supplementary theoretical operations that establish it more rigorously, and so on. Finally, it can seem to be a hasty generalization that must be retraced. In other words, the founding act of a science can always be reintroduced within the machinery of those transformations which derive from it.
In contrast, the initiation of a discursive practice is heterogeneous to its subsequent transformations. To expand a type of discursivity such as psychoanalysis as founded by Freud, is not to give it a form generality it would not have permitted at the outset but, rather, open it up to a certain number of possible applications. To limit psy choanalysis as a type of discursivity is, in
reality, to try to isolate in the founding act an eventually restricted number of propositions or statements to which, alone, one grants a founding value, and in relation to which certain concepts or theories accepted by Freud might be considered as derived, secondary, and accessory. In addition, one does not declare certain propositions in the work of these founders to be false: instead, when trying to seize the act of founding, one sets aside those statements that are not pertinent, either because they are deemed inessential, or because they are considered "prehistoric" and derived from another type of discursivity. In other words, unlike the founding of a science, the initiation of a discursive practice does not participate in its later transformations. As a result, one defines a proposition's theoretical validity in relation to the work of the founders - while, in the case of Galileo and Newton, it is in relation to what physics or cosmology is in its intrinsic structure and normativity that one affirms the validity of any proposition those men may have put forth. To phrase it very schematically: the work of initiators of discursivity is not situated in the space that science defines; rather, it is the science or the discursivity which refers back to their work as primary coordinates.
In this way we can understand the inevitable necessity, within these fields of discursivity, for a "return to the origin." This return which is part of the discursive field itself, never stops modifying it. The return is not a historical supplement that would be added to the discursivity, or merely an ornament; on the contrary, it constitutes a effective and necessary task of transforming the discursive practice itself. Reexamination of Galileo's text may well change our understanding of the history of mechanics, but it will never be able to change mechanics itself. On the other hand, reexamining Freud's texts modifies psychoanalysis itself, just as a reexamination of Marx's would modify Marxism.
What I have just outlined regarding these "discursive instaurations" is, of course, very schematic; this is true, in particular, of the opposition I have tried to draw between discursive initiation and scientific founding. It is not always easy to distinguish between the two; moreover, nothing proves that they are two mutually exclusive procedures. I have attempted the distinction for only one reason: to show that the author function, which is complex enough when one tries to situate it at the level of a book or a series of texts that carry a given signature, involves still more determining factors when one tries to analyze it in larger units; such as groups of works or entire disciplines.
§
To conclude, I would like to review the reasons why I attach a certain importance to what l have said.
On the one hand, an analysis in the direction that I have outlined might provide for an approach to a typology of discourse. It seems to me, at least at first glance, that such a typology cannot be constructed solely from the grammatical
features, formal structures, and objects of discourse: more likely, there exist properties or relationships peculiar to discourse (not reducible to the rules of grammar and logic), and one must use these to distinguish the major categories of discourse. The relationship (or non-relationship) with an author, and the different forms this relationship takes, constitute – in a quite visible manner – one of these discursive properties.
On the other hand, I believe that one could find here an introduction to the historical analysis of discourse. Perhaps it is time to study discourses not only in terms of their expressive value or formal transformations but according to their modes of existence. The modes of circulation, valorization, attribution, and appropriation of discourses vary with each culture and are modified within each. The manner in which they are articulated according to social relationships can be more readily understood, I believe, in the activity of the author function and in its modifications than in the themes or concepts that discourses set in motion.
It would seem that one could also, beginning with analyses of this type, reexamine the privileges of the subject. I realize that in undertaking the internal and architectonic analysis of a work (be it a literary text, philosophical system, or scientific work), in setting aside biographical and psychological references, one has already called back into question the absolute character and founding role of the subject. Still, perhaps one must return to this question, not in order to reestablish the theme of an originating subject but to grasp the subject's points of insertion, modes of functioning, and system of dependencies. Doing so means overturning the traditional problem, no longer raising the questions: How can a free subject penetrate the density of things and give it meaning? How can it activate the rules of a language from within and thus give rise to the designs that are properly its own? Instead, these questions will be raised: How, under what conditions, and in what forms can something like a subject appear in the order of discourse? What place can it occupy in each type of discourse, what functions can it assume, and by obeying what rules? In short, it is a matter of depriving the subject (or its substitute) of its role as originator, and of analyzing the subject as a variable and complex function of discourse.
Second, there are reasons dealing with the "ideological" status of the author. The question then becomes: How can one reduce the great peril, the great danger with which fiction threatens our world? The answer is: One can reduce it with the author. The author allows a limitation of the cancerous and dangerous proliferation of significations within a world where one is thrifty not only with one's resources and riches but also with one's discourses and their significations. The author is the principle of thrift in the proliferation of meaning. As a result, we must entirely reverse the traditional idea of the author. We are accustomed, as we have seen earlier, to saying that the author is the genial creator of a work in which he deposits, with infinite wealth and generosity, an inexhaustible world of significations. We are used to thinking that the author is so different from all other
men, and so transcendent with regard to all languages that, as soon as he speaks, meaning begins to proliferate, to proliferate indefinitely.
The truth is quite the contrary: the author is not an indefinite source of significations that fill a work; the author does not precede the works; he is a certain functional principle by which, in our culture, one limits, excludes, and chooses; in short, by which one impedes the free circulation, the free manipulation, the free composition, decomposition, and recomposition of fiction. In fact, if we are accustomed to presenting the author as a genius, as a perpetual surging of invention, it is because, in reality, we make him function in exactly the opposite fashion. One can say that the author is an ideological product, since we represent him as the opposite of his historically real function. When a historically given function is represented in a figure that inserts it, one has an ideological production. The author is therefore the ideological figure by which one marks the manner in which we fear the proliferation of meaning.
In saying this, I seem to call for a form of culture in which fiction would not be limited by the figure of the author. It would be pure romanticism, however, to imagine a culture in which the fictive would operate in an absolutely free state, in which fiction would be put at the disposal of everyone and would develop without passing through something like a necessary or constraining figure. Although, since the eighteenth century, the author has played the role of the regulator of the fictive; a role quite characteristic of our era of industrial and bourgeois society, of individualism and private property, still, given the historical modifications that are taking place, it does not seem necessary that the author function remain constant in form, complexity, and even in existence. I think that, as our society changes, at the very moment when it is in the process of changing, the author function will disappear, and in such a manner that fiction and its polysemous texts will once again function according to another mode, but still with a system of constraint – one that will no longer be the author but will have to be determined or, perhaps, experienced [expérimenter].
All discourses, whatever their status, form, value, and whatever the treatment to which they will be subjected, would then develop in the anonymity of a murmur. We would no longer hear the questions that have been rehashed for so long: Who really spoke? Is it really he and not someone else? With what authenticity or originality? And what part of his deepest sell did he express in his discourse? Instead, there would be other questions, like these: What are the modes of existence of this discourse? Where has it been used, how can it circulate, and who can appropriate it for himself? What are the places in it where there is room for possible subjects? Who can assume these various subject functions? And behind all these questions, we would hear hardly anything but the stirring of an indifference: What difference does it make who is speaking?
§
NOTES
i John Searle, Essay in the philosophy of language (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1969) pp. 162-74
*This essay is the text of a lecture presented to the Societé Francais de philosophie on 22 February 1969 (Foucault gave a modified form of the lecture in the United States in 1970). This translation by Josué V. Harari has been slightly modified.
全国翻译价格 关于全国各地区翻译价格我们根据客户的不同需求和具体情况，提供多种等级和特色的翻译服务，供客户选择：（注：以下报价均为参考价格，精确报价将根据稿件内容的难度、技术处理的复杂程度和时限要求的缓急而定。
品质控制 坚持高端定位是外语通翻译的核心要素，追求高品质翻译需要译员具备深厚的语言功底和专业背景知 识，更需要严格的质量控制体系来管理这一过程： 外语通六阶梯质量控制体系 第一阶梯：译文评估承接 分析稿件性质、用途要求、商务背景、专业术语、数量和交稿时间等，确定是否有100%的把握承接， 否则坚决放弃，以免因质量或交稿时间耽误客户和影响品牌形象。 第二阶梯：专业译员翻译 专业背景的译员只专注于一个行业领域的精准翻译，项目经理根据译文评估，从外语通全球译员库中 分析挑选多名此行业的专业译员成立项目组，统一专业术语和标准，协同翻译。 第三阶梯：翻译质量监控 项目经理监控翻译进展，每日集中疑难词汇，请签约专家释疑。每日抽查译文质量，及时解决译文质 量问题。 第四阶梯：译文校对排版 汇总所有译文，查错补漏，进一步统一术语，按原文进行排版，形成完整初稿。 第五阶梯：专家译审修改 专家译审对翻译初稿进行翻译准确性审核，确保译稿忠于原文，专业词汇纯正地道。 六阶梯：外籍母语润色第 在华外籍翻译（外译中稿件由中文功底深厚的编辑）对译稿的语法、词汇进行修正和润色，确保译稿 纯正、地道，达到母语品质。 外语通翻译严格执行《ISO译文质量体系》，《翻译质量国家标准GB/T 19682-2005》： 译文质量标准Ⅲ类通用笔译Ⅱ类专业笔译Ⅰ类高级笔译译文用途内容概要、参考资料一般文件和材料正式文件、法律文书、出版物错漏译率小于5‰小于2‰0‰ 译员经验3年以上5年以上8年以上 译员学历硕士以上硕士以上硕士以上 行业背景常识业内资深 海外背景无/短期中期长期 译文校对有有有 专家译审无有有 母语润色无无有 译文排版简单排版详细排版出版级别
翻译公司收费标准 1.客户需要翻译的目标语言的普遍性和稀缺性可能导致非常 不同的费用。英语比较普遍，需求大，市场专业的英语翻译人 才也很多，翻译公司无论是从降价到抢占市场，还是成本核算 来考虑，英语收费都比较合理和透明。 其他诸如法语、德语、日语、俄语排在第二梯队，翻译公司收 费标准一般都是200-280元，视稿件专业度和数量略有调整； 意大利，西班牙，越南，泰文等东南亚语种已经接近稀有语 种了，翻译报价至少300元千字起。 2.根据翻译项目类型 常见的翻译方法主要包括翻译翻译、同声传译、本地翻译、口译翻译等，翻译项目自然是不同的收费。 3.根据翻译项目时长 这一时期的持续时间主要是指项目长度：同声传译、会议翻译、商务洽谈、双语主持人、口译、护送翻译、展览翻译，当然，视频翻译、音频翻译按时间计算的时间和会议类型是一个重要因素，是翻译时间决定翻译价格的一个重要因素。 4.根据翻译项目字数
翻译项目的字数是影响收费的重要因素之一，翻译字数主要对于笔译而言，例如：文件翻译、图书翻译、资料翻译、画册翻译等等，这些文件资料的字数决定了项目的翻译价格和翻译收费标准。 5.根据翻译项目语种 主流语种：英语、日语、韩语等和小语种：阿拉伯语、希腊语、印尼语等的翻译收费标准区别。我们知道：“物以稀为贵，”所以小语种的翻译报价会比主流语种收费要高的。 6.根据翻译项目难易程度 对于翻译公司来说，翻译费在很大程度上取决于翻译的难度程度，不同的行业术语不同，难度不同; 专业翻译公司将根据翻译人员的翻译水平、专业知识、翻译经验等方式来评价自己的翻译团队，高层次的翻译人员当然都是高收费; 如通用翻译、精细翻译、出版层次等不同类型的翻译报价不同，稿件的行业领域、材料难度、选择翻译类型等都是决定翻译公司收费标准的因素。
英文合同翻译价格英文合同翻译需要多少钱 在企业的经营过程中，有时候可能会涉及到翻译这个问题，但是一般的小企业并没有专门的人去做这件事情，大部分都是外包。那么对于企业来讲，翻译一份英文合同需要多少钱呢？作为浙江省最大的翻译公司，以琳翻译就在这里为大家解读一下。 一般来讲，翻译这项服务都是以字数来计价的，市场上的一般的价格是50-80元/千字，这是一个基本的价格。但是不同的公司的专业性质不一样的话，所给出的价格也是不一样的。对于公司的衡量标准来讲，影响价格的因素主要有：公司的资历、翻译人员的专业性、翻译文件的种类、难度等。所以，如果你需要去找翻译公司去服务，那么就需要考虑这些方面的东西。而对于合同这种文件，对于公司来讲是十分重要的，所以也需要去找专业的公司去进行翻译，如果是找一个资质不够的公司或者团队，那么就可能产生一些意想不到的问题，从而影响到公司的最终利益。 下面，我们来看看以琳翻译给出的翻译的价格。 从上面的价格可以看出，以琳翻译给出的价格是高于一般市场上的价格的，最低级别的翻译是160元/千字，然后分为A、B、C三级。C级译稿为普通中籍译员+中籍译员审核，满足客户对译文的普通要求。这是对于一般的合同而言的，但是如果是部分专业性质较强或者要求比较高的译文的话，那么可以选择更高级别的翻译，当然价格还是相对比较高的。 那么以琳翻译的资质是怎么样呢？我们再来看一下。 杭州以琳翻译有限公司是浙江省最大的实体翻译公司、中国翻译协会单位会员、美国翻译协会会员、全国翻译专业硕士研究生教育实习基地、西博会指定合作伙伴、以琳杭州翻译公司翻译团队成员均具有五年以上专业翻译、项目管理经验，绝大部分成员具有十年以上行业翻译经验。翻译服务涵盖英语、法语、韩语、日语、德语、俄语、西班牙语、葡萄牙语、
精诚英语翻译报价50-80元千字（市场价格100左右 精诚英语翻译工作室是由众多英语方面精英组成的翻译团队,一直致力于为广大中小企业和个人提供专业低价中英文翻译服务。价格是我们永远的优势！！！！最低价格支付宝担保交易，让你省钱又放心接受试译！！自信源于专业可以百度搜索精诚英语翻译找到我们 选择我们的理由：可以百度搜索精诚英语翻译找到我们 1.保证价格最低，团队网络化运作，无需经营成本，可以通过低价让利于客户。（有些客户看到这么低的价格还不敢相信，但是对于我们来说是完全可以接受的。） 2.保证准时、保密、准确 3.接受淘宝交易，让您没有任何担忧。 4.长期翻译经验，保证质量让您满意。 龚如心遗产案虽然告一段落，「遗产」二字仍然成为近日香港的焦点。新春期间，民政事务局局长曾德成表示，政府将展开全港非物质文化遗产首期普查，希望市民为遗产清单提出建议。 「遗产」是「资产」？ 近五、六年间，香港对保护本地小区和文化传统的意识高涨，现在政府带头要列一个「非物质文化遗产」清单，理应是很受欢迎之举。不过普查尚未展开，就引来学者争议，其中单是「非物质文化遗产」这个译名，就引起不少误会。 「非物质文化遗产」的原文是intangible cultural heritage（英文）或patrimoine culturel immateriel （法文），是联合国在1997年以尊重多元文化为大原则而提出的概念，并由联合国教科文组织制定「保护非物质文化遗产公约」，2006年生效。 「非物质文化遗产」是中国大陆的翻译，香港有学者不约而同就「非物质」和「遗产」二字提出质疑。香港城市大学中国文化中心主任郑培凯早在2005年就大声疾呼译名不妥。他认为原文heritage/patrimoine的意义是「传承」而非资产，不容易引发出财产的概念。而现在约定俗成译作「遗产」，容易令人觉得祖宗留下的东西，是可以变卖和投资的生财工具，与联合国提出的文化传承精神背道而驰。郑教授认识，正确的译名是「非物质文化承继」或「非实物文化传承」。另一位民俗学研究者陈云进一步指出，intangible「乃触摸不到的事，无形无相之事」，应用「精神价值」代之，「非物质」有消灭了精神之嫌，所以中国人应堂堂正正将之翻译为「无形文化传承」。 姗姗来迟的「遗产」 不论是「非物质」还是「无形」，「遗产」还是「承传」，即使公约成员国中国曲译甚至错译，香港特区政府还是只能照单全收。而且，随之而来的不止是字面的斟酌，而是「遗产」的搜寻和管理问题。 中国自2005年起，就开始非物质文化遗产（由于这个名称已约定俗成，故下文仍沿用之，并简称为「非遗」）普查，并陆续列出清单。香港也在翌年提出编制非遗清单，但却延至去年才聘专家普查，估计最快要2012年才完成。 非遗普查尚未展开，在国家文化部的再三邀请（或是说催促？）下，去年九月，香港终于申请将长洲太平清醮、大澳端午游涌、大坑舞火龙和香港潮人盂兰胜会列为第三批国家级非遗，预计今年六月有结果。 其实香港已错过了2006和2008年首批和第二批的申报机会，所以，至目前为止，在中国的文化版图上，香港是唯一没有任何有形和无形「遗产」的主要城市／特区，就连比邻的澳门也凭神像雕刻工艺获得2008年国家级非遗之「奖项」。 有人说非遗不过是人有我有，纯粹锦上添花；也有人说，中国在维护主权和领土完整的概念下，又怎能在文化层面少了香港一席？香港能够「出产」一个非遗，中国在全球的文化图谱中就多一个筹码。 姑勿论背后原因为何，由于「保护非物质文化遗产公约」也适用于香港，香港特区政府就有责任找出和保护濒危失传、与社会关系密切及具香港独特性的文化传统。现在起步虽迟，但为时未晚。 「遗产」的管理问题 不过，既然政府要展开普查，另一个问题来了。民间传统应该是属于民间的，并由民间自行发展，还是属于官方，由政府承担保护与管理？ 据政府委聘负责首期普查的香港科技大学华南研究中心主任廖迪生表示，政府至今仍未有任何政策配合或承诺给予全面的保护，所以，即使清单出炉，有些遗产仍有可能难逃「破产」的命运。他强调制作非遗清单只是第一步，更重要的是如何保护这些项目。 再问民政事务局，曾德成局长除了曾向立法会议员表示，制定清单是向国家文化部申请列为国家级非遗的第一步，进而再向联合国教科文组织提出申报为世界非物质文化遗产，他所提出的，就是以遗产作招徕吸引外地游客，「以提升香港作为旅游目的地的吸引力」。 这才是令人担心的地方。「非遗」这个金漆招牌在中国许多地方都有点石成金之效。戴上这个冠冕，民俗文化很容易沦为生财工具、游客的消费品，连婚嫁仪式也可用来表演，完全违背了保护非遗的原意。曾德成之言，是否意味着香港也要跟着祖国一起走上同一条路？
英文翻译价格 根据以英文作为母语的人数计算，英文是最多国家使用的官方语言，英语也是世界上最广泛的第二语言，也是欧盟，最多国际组织和英联邦国家的官方语言之一。但仅拥有世界第二位的母语使用者，少于标准汉语。上两个世纪英国和美国在文化、经济、军事、政治和科学上的领先地位使得英语成为一种国际语言。如今，许多国际场合都使用英语做为沟通媒介。英语也是与电脑联系最密切的语言，大多数编程语言都与英语有联系，而且随着网络的使用，使英文的使用更普及。英语是联合国的工作语言之一。 为了方便大家了解英文翻译价格，小编在目前汇集最多翻译团队的高校译云上面获得了不同翻译精英团队所展示的价格。 暨南大学翻译中心：中英---普稿---150---千字英中---普稿---250---千字 武汉理工大学-外国语学院MTI翻译中心 ：中英互译中英130-150 英中100-130 华中科技大学-翻译研究中心 ：中英互译中英120-150 英中100-120 湖南科技大学MTI中心：中英---普稿---150---千字 上海师大外国语学院翻译中心： 中英---普稿---200元---千字英语普通文本译成汉语---120元---千字西南大学翻译中心：中英---普稿----300---千字英中---普稿---200---千字 上海理工大学MTI翻译中心：中英---普稿---100---千字 南京财经大学外国语学院翻译研究中心：中英---普稿---100---千字 一般英文翻译价格是是在100—300元每千字，根据译员质量、翻译内容、需要的时间等都会有一定的波动，所以以上价格供大家参考，具体的可以准备好稿件了去问，这样会更加准确一些。
翻译服务收费标准 一、笔译人民币元/千字中文( 加急加收30% —70% ，专业加收50% ) 语种中译外外译中外译外 英语170 140 面议 日语170 140 韩语190 160 德语220 180 俄语220 180 法语220 180 意大利语280 250 西班牙语280 250 葡萄牙语290 260 阿拉伯语350 320 越南语430 400 荷兰语510 460 波兰语380-480 360-40 塞尔维亚语370-470 420-530 泰国语260-380 280-520 老挝语320-420 370-480 印度语320-420 370-480 希腊语370-470 420-530 哈萨克语280-380 300-410 瑞典语300-400 340-450 丹麦语320-420 370-470 印度尼西亚语330-450 350-460 蒙古语300-400 350-460 1、字数计算：以中文版稿件在Windows word文档显示的字符数（不计空格）为基准。也即包含了标点符号，因其为理解语义的必需。 2、图表计算：图表按每个A4页面，按页酌情计收排版费用。 3、外文互译：按照中文换算，即每个拉丁单词乘以二等于相应的中文字数。 4、日翻译量：正常翻译量3000-5000字/日/人，超过正常翻译量按专业难易受20%加急费． 5、付款方式：按预算总价的20%收取定金，按译后准确字数计总价并交稿付款。 6、注意事项：出差在原价格上增加20%，客户负责翻译的交通、食宿和安全费用。 二、口译价格： (1) 交传报价（元/人/天，加小时按100-150元/小时加收费用）类型英语德、日、法、俄、韩小语种 一般活动700 800 1500 商务活动500-1200 500-1500 800-3000 中小型会议1200-3000 1500-3000 2500-3000 大型会议1200-4000 2500-6000 4000-9000 (2) 同传报价（元/人/天） 类别中-英互译日、韩、德、俄、法、韩-中互译小语种-中互译 商务会议5000-8000 6000-10000 8000-10000 中小型会议5500-8000 7000-12000 8000-12000 大型国际会议6000-9000 8000-12000 12000-16000
加快实施“走出去”战略是适应全球化新形势和我国发展新变化，培育参与和引领国际合作和竞争新优势的重要举措。据预测，今后五年，我国对外投资规模总量超过5000亿美元，并且年增速在10%以上。浙江是外贸大省，境外经贸合作区建设走在全国前列，境外投资一直保持高速增长，《浙江省利用外资和境外投资“十三五”规划》也作出了明确部署。跨境法商论坛拟计划在杭州举办，将促进浙企与马来西亚、新加坡相关机构的直接对话，帮助浙江企业进一步拓展“一带一路”市场，寻找国际合作渠道，促进有效投资。 各式各样大手笔的贸易投资合作，也预示着新的发展机会。对从事语言服务工作的人士无疑是好消息。据中青在线记者报道，在之前“一带一路”国际合作高峰论坛会议中，现场的同传耳机里，18种工作语言分别是：汉语、英语、法语、俄语、西班牙语、柬埔寨语、捷克语、匈牙利语、印度尼西亚语、哈萨克语、老挝语、蒙古语、波兰
语、塞尔维亚语、土耳其语、越南语、日语和韩语。每个座位上都放有一张列举了这些语言的名单，除了标注与同传耳机频道对应的16种语言以外，同传耳机中的第17、第18频道分别是日语和韩语。 这无疑是翻译从业者的一剂强心针，不少小语种从业者和学习者表示，政府、学校、企业等对于小语种的关注度，现在越来越高了。更日常的商务沟通、贸易合作等等势必越来越密集和频繁，毫无疑问，国内的翻译人才供不应求，高质量的翻译人群，已经成为最抢手的人才。 随着翻译需求的不断加大，国内的翻译产业开始蓬勃发展。从2012年到2015年，我国翻译专业硕士(MTI)学位授予点也由2007年的15所大学增加至2016年的215所大学，国内翻译公司数量已达到72，485家。咱们先了解一下市场小语种的翻译报价参考： *以上报价为人民币基准价，不含税金，仅供参考，具体报价根据需译资料数量、领域、难易等具体确定！
精诚翻译公司五周年五折优惠中5年经验！先翻译后付费学生客户送50元优惠券，可以搜索精诚翻译公司者50元翻译找到我们 The book of“Chinese Language" aims at improving students' Chinese accomplishment and emphasizes on humanity, instead of literature or humanism. The book mainly consists of literary works, and also involves philosophy, history, art, science and technology, so as to interest students of different majors and help broaden their vision. 1Ancient literature 2 Modern literature 3 English-Chinese translation In the textbook of Public English, one third of contents have been updated, therefore, the contents become more interesting, comprehensive and practical. The attached vocabularies enable students to master the law of learning vocabularies, and the actual use of English sentences help improve their ability of using English. "Fundamentals of Management" is a subject which discusses basic theories, principles, management functions and general method of management activities, it also combines theories with practice closely. Through studying this course, students should be familiar with basic concept of management, relevant knowledge system and thoughts by various management school; understanding basic management theories and relevant principles in depth, as well as planning, decision-making, organization, leadership, motivation, control, communication and other basic management functions and methods. "The History of Chinese Culture" The book' author is an contemporary Chinese culture expert who has published many cultural works. This book focuses on evolution of academic thought and culture, at the same time, it also consider behavior, system,
“一带一路”倡议提出五年来，青岛市紧紧围绕“新亚欧大陆桥经济走廊主要节点城市”和“海上合作战略支点”功能定位，积极融入大局，深入贯彻国家政策，在经贸合作、外事外宣、金融保障、海洋科技合作等领域着力打造对外开放新高地。对“一带一路”沿线国家累计投资69.8亿美元，承包工程完成营业额130.6亿美元。全市银行机构累计为“一带一路”沿线国家和地区有投资项目的84家大型企业授信860.3亿元，贷款余额445.1亿元，支持3000余家企业与“一带一路”沿线61个国家开展贸易投资与建设合作。市级领导出访沿线国家达50余批次；接待国外重要来宾、团组来访530余批次，友城总数达到70个，遍及全球37个国家。 各式各样大手笔的贸易投资合作，也预示着新的发展机会。对从事语言服务工作的人士无疑是好消息。据中青在线记者报道，在之前“一带一路”国际合作高峰论坛会议中，现场的同传耳机里，18种工作语言分别是：汉语、
英语、法语、俄语、西班牙语、柬埔寨语、捷克语、匈牙利语、印度尼西亚语、哈萨克语、老挝语、蒙古语、波兰语、塞尔维亚语、土耳其语、越南语、日语和韩语。每个座位上都放有一张列举了这些语言的名单，除了标注与同传耳机频道对应的16种语言以外，同传耳机中的第17、第18频道分别是日语和韩语。 这无疑是翻译从业者的一剂强心针，不少小语种从业者和学习者表示，政府、学校、企业等对于小语种的关注度，现在越来越高了。更日常的商务沟通、贸易合作等等势必越来越密集和频繁，毫无疑问，国内的翻译人才供不应求，高质量的翻译人群，已经成为最抢手的人才。 随着翻译需求的不断加大，国内的翻译产业开始蓬勃发展。从2012年到2015年，我国翻译专业硕士(MTI)学位授予点也由2007年的15所大学增加至2016年的215所大学，国内翻译公司数量已达到72，485家。咱们先了解一下市场小语种的翻译报价参考： *以上报价为人民币基准价，不含税金，仅供参考，具体报价根据需译资料数量、领域、难易等具体确定！ 尽管翻译人才输出与翻译机构成立都发展迅速，但真正能满足企业发展需求的高质量翻译机构却并不好找。一方面是因为从事翻译行业的，不少都是翻译新手，没有行业经验和过硬实力，另一方面，也是因为翻译机构资质参差不齐，没有统一的规范，翻译价格和翻译质量也受到影响。怎么选择靠谱的翻译机构就成为企业的困惑点。
小语种翻译现状 目前很多大城市会出现一种奇怪的现象，当小众语种国家人代表在我国开会发言演讲时，台下的大家只能眼巴巴的望着他却不知所云，居然没人能翻译，这种现象引起了各相关部门的广泛关注。翻译达人表示说，我国很多二三线城市同声传译人才缺乏，翻译机构规模档次不够。面对二三线城市建设步伐的加快以及国际性会议的增多，高端翻译市场亟待提升档次。 国际会议尴尬 西安高新区工作的张先生讲述到，某次会议当天，来自亚洲的一些国家的部门代表轮流发言，参与会议的也都是来自周边国家的企业以及政府代表。每人配备同声传译设备，并且有同传人员现场翻译，一切看上去井井有条。可当轮到格鲁吉亚一位代表发言时，同传人员却“撤退”了。说着格鲁吉亚语的这位代表只好自顾自说了半天，下面参会人员看上去一片茫然。 人才严重匮乏 目前大多二三线城市的小语种翻译人员都是从北京、上海、广州这些大城市请过来的，并且价格不菲！同声传译人才对翻译水平的要求最高，不仅要具备良好的口语功底，还要对当地的文化有所了解，一般都需要有国外生活几年的经历才能胜任。大多二三线城中外语翻译人才还仅仅停留在英语方面，小语种翻译人才严重匮乏。而能提供大多小语种翻译的，一般只有像翻译达人这样的翻译平台。 小语种翻译专业开设少 导致小语种翻译人才稀缺的因素有很多，其中有一个因素就是开设小语种专业的高校少。比如小语种罗马尼亚语，全国仅有1所大学开设了这个专业，即北京外国语大学。还有上文提到的格鲁吉亚语，目前在我国还没有一所大学开设了
这个专业。曾经北大给俄语专业的学生开设了这个课程，请的格鲁吉亚的外教讲授的，但是因为外教的变动，这课程现在也没有了。因为开设小语种的学校少，学习该语种的人自然也少。随之就是翻译的价格水涨船高。可以说，翻译人才越难找，收费也就越贵。 翻译市场亟待壮大 人才的匮乏会明显的限制整个翻译市场的壮大与发展，国际性会议的大幅度增多，更导致了小语种人才严重稀缺。而懂得小语种的翻译人才，目前正在成为各大公司热捧的对象。甚至因为人才稀缺，企业在招聘标准上也低出不少，如某些公司招聘负责商务谈判及日常翻译工作的俄语翻译，已经打出“应届毕业生也可”的条件。所以，目前我国的小语种翻译市场亟待扩大，也需要更多的小语种翻译人才。