英汉翻译中的显化和隐化

Explicitness and Implicitness of V ague Language in Translationbetween English and ChineseI. IntroductionII. A Brief Introduction to V ague language1.The Definition of V ague Language2.Characteristics of V ague language2.1.Subjectivity and Indeterminacy2.2.Agglutination and V ariability3.Classifications of V ague Language3.1. Linguistic V agueness3.1.1 V agueness at the Level of Phonetics3.1.2 V agueness at the Level of Meaning3.1.3 V agueness at the Level of Grammar3.2.Cultural V agueness4. Functions of V ague Language3.3.V agueness and Politeness3.4.V agueness and Humor3.5.V agueness and AestheticsIII. The Strategies of dealing with V ague Language in Translation1.Factors Influencing V ague Language Translation1.1.Properties of Language: Differences Between English and Chinese1.2.Cultural Difference and Cultural Lacuna2.Explicitness in V ague Language Translation2.1.Precision to Precision2.2.V agueness to Precision3.Implicitness in V ague Language Translation3.1.V agueness to V agueness3.2.Precision to V aguenessIV. ConclusionⅠ.IntroductionThe emergence and development of language has experienced a long time, so dose human‟s understanding of language. People‟s research on language has always laid particular stress on “precision”. The more precise, the better. But the reality is usually unsatisfactory. For the absolute precision is very hard to achieve and now people have found there is no absolutely clear things in the world. In our daily communication, the meaning we imparted is sometimes inevitably inadequate or unclear which lead to the misunderstanding of the receiver. Even facing the same thing different people give different views. That is the vagueness of language.Since the publication of fuzzy sets by L.A.zadeh, un expert on automatic control, many disciplines related to vagueness have sprouted up across the world, as J.Channell states :”Interests in vagueness in language use and meaning has arisen in a number of disciplines: literary criticism, linguistics, psychology, philosophy.”(p5) Among them the study on vague language has gained more and more attentions. In China, Vague Linguistics by Wu Tieping, a famous linguist, may be rated as the foundation stone of the study on vague language. In language communication, vague language is not only unavoidable but also necessary. In many cases, it can make language expression more natural and more appropriate. Just as Kant believes:”vague concepts are more expressive than clear concepts…beauty should be something that can not be explained in words. We cannot always convey what we think by words. ”(Wu Tieping p44) thus it can be seen that vague language has its own advantages in communication.Nowadays communications become more frequent between people of different languages and cultural backgrounds. Therefore translation plays an important role in the exchange of information which is bound to involve the study of language. V agueness in language becomes an inevitable and indispensable phenomenon in translation. Now vagueness has no longer been a new term in translation field and it adds much difficulty to the transfer of meaning from the source to the target language for languages is usually not share the same vagueness. The vagueness of language has much to do with culture, politics, economy and other non-linguistic factors.V ague language widely exists in many aspects of our life. More and more translators have explored the strategies of dealing with vague language in translation. In this paper the author presents two methods: explicitation and implicitation after the analysis of vague language.The author attempts to find the effective ways to deal with vague language in translation upon the basis of a brief understanding of vague language in order to offer help to the translation.II. A Brief Introduction to V ague LanguageThe appearance of vagueness can be traced back to the publication of the article Fuzzy Sets by L.A.Zadeh in which he states that the objects in material world have no definite boundaries. The meaning of vagueness has been enriched with the development of science and technology and the expansion of human activity in time and space. Vague language as a branch of the whole findings is the main focus of this chapter.2.1. The Definition of VaguenessAs for the definition of vague language, different scholars or researchers have different answers, for things become different when we look at them from different angles.Peirce, un American famous philosophy and mathematician, is perhaps the first to try to elaborate the notion in a rigorous way. He says:A proposition is vague where there are possible states of things concerningwhich it is intrinsically uncertain whether, had they been contemplated by thespeaker, he would have regarded them as excluded or allowed by theproposition. By intrinsically uncertain we mean not uncertain in consequenceof any ignorance of the interpreter, but because the speaker‟s habits oflanguage were indeterminate. (Channell p7)Another approach to vagueness is found in Deese‟s work which is more psychologically-oriented. He claims that vagueness is not a concept that applies to language but to the meanings which language expresses. That is, it is the meanings that is vague but not the language itself. He says:…that the correspondence between the ideas possessed by two individualswho are in communication on a common topic is rather poor, a conditionwhich we ordinarily do not notice because we seldom make explicit attemptsto validate a communicated idea against the original. When we do, as in thecase of giving directions to someone about how to do something, we aresuddenly made aware of the discrepancy that exists between …the same‟ideain the minds of two different people.(Channell p8)Upon this question, many domestic scholars has also achieved a lot. Mao Ronggui discusses the esthetic effect of vague language in his Translation Esthetics. He regarded vague language as that “the words has indistinct and wide semantic extension. It is not ”.Generally speaking, vagueness refers to such a fact that there are no clear-cut boundaries between two concepts. It isn‟t a bad thing, far from it, vagueness and precision are, like the two sides of a coin, essential part of language system.2.2. Characteristics of vague languageV agueness is an inherent nature of language. After knowing its definition, it is still unclear that how to judge whether a word is vague or not. So it is meaningful for us to discuss the characteristics of vague language, such as subjectivity, indeterminacy, agglutination and variability, to name a few of them.2.2.1. Subjectivity and IndeterminacyWe all know that opinions vary from person to person. When we describe something or express our views vague language appears. Different experiences and outlooks make everyone see things differently, so the denotation of vague language varies according to his/her own way of understanding. For example, we each have different views on what kind of women is beautiful. When facing the same woman, someone may think she is beautiful while others do not which is resulted from the subjectivity of the word “beautiful”. The reasons of the discrepancy of the comprehension of the same concept lie in different experiences and background.The indeterminacy of vague language refers to the uncertain membership of some cases. Some words are vague when we talk about color words. For instance, everybody knows that the leaves are green in summer and turn yellow gradually in autumn. But if we take one leaf in early autumn it is not easy to tell whether the leaf is green or yellow. It may be a bit green with some sort of a yellow color. So we usually hear such vague words as yellowish green. Another case is that the explanation given by dictionary is thick yellowish white liquor floated on the milk. From the word “yellowish white”we can see the cream may be white with somewhat yellow. In reality, the color words are not clearly divided as the color in spectrum.2.2.2. Agglutination and V ariabilityThe agglutination of vague language means that some vague language is a continuum and there are no clear-cut dividing lines between them. This feature can find its best expression in vague language indicating space or time. Time and space are actually continuums without fixed and unchangeable boundaries to divide them. Each language can divide them according to its own structure. When we talk about time in our daily life, we say morning, afternoon, evening or night. But there are no well-defined borders among them. Although the central area is clear, the peripheral area is vague. Since they happen one after another, sometimes we cannot tell which period we are in, because they often overlap.The variability of vague language refers to two aspects. Firstly, vague language is not always vague. In some cases, it may assume an accurate meaning. V ague words can become precise ones by collocating with other words. For example, the word “long”is vague. There are no rules telling that how long can be regarded as “long”. But it is precise in “long wave”whose wavelength is from 1000m to 10000m in physics. Many terms, although literally vague, are accurate when used in certain field of study. Colors, like red, orange, yellow without distinct boundaries, are prescribed strictly by scientists, namely, red ranges from 6200 to 7000 angstrom, orange from 5920 to 6200, and yellow between 5780 and 5920. From above examples we can see that in academic field it is necessary to define a term rigorously while in our daily life it‟s enough to use them in their vague sense. Secondly, it means the range a vague category covers may vary. The scope of a vague category is either enlarged or narrowed. Generally speaking, this kind of variability comes from some factors such as gender, culture and social status. Let‟s take “night”for example; the scope of night varies as the season changes. That period is long in winter and short in summer. Many words share the same characteristics. A big rat is much smaller than a small elephant. As we can see, the scope of these kinds of vague words changes in consistent with thecontext they are in. There are two people. One is from New Y ork; the other comes from a small village. They are likely to have different ideas on “tall building”. A large number of skyscrapers are found in New Y ork. They may take a building with 40 stories as a tall one, while a building with 10 floors is considered tall for a people from a small village. This situation should be taken into account when we do translation work. For many difficulties in translation originate in the great gap of social difference.Of all the characteristics we have talked about, the indeterminacy is the most prominent one.2.3. Classifications of Vague LanguageThe classification of vague language is helpful for both its study and its translation. But in this matter the scholars didn‟t reach an agreement as its definition does. Some researchers classify it from different levels of language, some others according to the part of speech.Some linguists divide vague language into three parts: vague additives, vagueness by choice of vague words, vagueness by implicative.(具体见翻译的模糊性及翻译中的模糊处理论文) (Channell, 1999: 18) Zhang Qiao, a famous linguist in our country, also thinks that vague language has many types under different classified method. According to the part of speech, there are vague nouns(say past, present, future), vague adjectives(say beautiful, healthy, red) and vague quantifiers(say several, some, a lot of); according to the extension of vague language, there are vague words with indefinite top limit(e.g. a short person, a young person, cold water), vague words with indefinite lower limit(e.g. a tall person, an old people, hot water) and vague words with both indefinite top and indefinite lower limit(e.g. a middle sized person, a middle aged person, warm water).In this paper we‟ll discuss the types of vague language at the linguistic level.2.3.1. Linguistic Vagueness2.3.1.1. V agueness at the Level of PhoneticsThe effect of this kind of vagueness often comes from homophony or hearing delusion. It usually appears in the pun to achieve the intended humor. For example: The professor tapped on his desk and shouted:”Young men, Order!”—the entire class yelled:” Beer!”Translation: 教授敲击桌子喊道：你们这些年轻人吆喝（要喝）什么？学生：啤酒。

中英翻译中的显化现象分析作者：吴羡来源：《现代交际》2014年第03期[摘要]随着翻译研究进入基于语料库的语言学研究阶段，作为翻译普遍性中的重要一员，“显化”目前受到了广泛关注。

本文将从显化定义、显化假说、显化因素和类别等方面对显化研究进行全面介绍。

显化是译出语同译入语之间语言及文化转换的有效手段之一，显化翻译思维有助于消解译者对原语的过分依赖，可以帮助译者较好地处理译出语和译入语之间的语码转换，从而有助于译出高质量的作品。

[关键词]翻译显化语言特性文化[中图分类号]H315.9 [文献标识码]A [文章编号]1009-5349（2014）03-0020-03在翻译实践中，当涉及到语言要素不对等、风格特征不相称、文化背景相异等难以解决的问题时，译者往往会采用诸如增补、删减、替代、解释等手段使译文达到内容与形式的对等，因此，如果把显化当做具有普遍性的课题来研究，也许能对翻译手段和策略的运用给出更为合理的解释。

翻译并非译出语同译入语之间的简单语码转换。

语篇由显性表达式和隐性表达式共同构成。

忽略这两方面中的任何一方，对语篇意义的理解都不完整。

语言符号和表达形式本身是意义的引领者，译出语文本文字表征结构的意义要经过译者的深层加工，将显性表达和隐性表达显化，将藏匿于译出语文本中文字壳体里面的意义挖掘出来，使其在译入语中显化。

（姜菲，董洪学 2009： 106）一、“显化”概说“显化”这一术语最早是由Vinay， Jean-Paul和Jean Darbelnet在对法语和英语从文本对比研究角度提出的。

它作为“一种文体翻译技巧”，指“在目标语中对原语中隐含的但可以从语境或情境中推断出的信息加以明确说明的过程”。

（Vinay&Darbelnet，1995：342）随后，Blum-Kulka对显化进行了系统性的研究，她于1986年提出了“显性假说”，即“译者对原文的解释过程可能导致译文比原文冗长。

这一冗长现象表现为译者提高了译文在衔接层次上的显化程度”。

翻译中的隐和显二、英汉翻译中显化的定义和分类显化（Manifestation）作为一种翻译策略，在英汉互译的过程中主要指的是译者为了增强目标语言读者的理解力和接受度，有意识地选择将源语文本中的某些隐含意义、文化背景信息或者修辞手法更加明确、直观地表达出来。

在实际翻译实践中，显化不仅体现在词汇层面的选择，如通过添加注释、替换更易于理解的词语或短语来传达原文的深层含义，还表现在句法结构的重构以及文化元素的阐释上。

词汇显化：当源语言中的某个词或习语具有丰富的文化内涵而目标语言缺乏直接对应的表达时，译者可能会采取扩展性翻译方法，即将原文的隐晦之处具体化，例如将一串英文成语直译成包含多个汉语词汇以充分展现其完整意蕴。

语法显化：在处理一些具有复杂语法结构的句子时，为了确保信息传递的清晰无误，译者可能需要调整原文的句式结构，使之更符合目标语言的习惯表达方式，从而显化原本可能隐藏在曲折句法中的关键信息。

文化显化：鉴于英汉两种语言背后的文化差异，有些文化特定的概念、习俗或历史背景在翻译时若不做适当说明，可能难以被对方文化圈的读者所理解。

文化显化包括将原文中潜在的文化暗示直接翻译并加以解释，或者采用类比、注解等方式让目标读者能够把握原文的文化含义。

英汉翻译中的显化是一种旨在跨越语言与文化鸿沟，实现有效沟通的重要手段，它要求译者在忠实于原文的同时，具备敏锐的文化洞察力和灵活的语言运用能力，以恰如其分的方式揭示原文中那些可能被目标语言读者所忽视的隐含信息。

1. 语义显化：将原文中的隐含意义转化为明确的意义表达在翻译过程中，语义显化是一种重要的策略，它涉及将原文中隐含或含糊的意义转化为目标语言中的明确表达。

这种转换不仅涉及词汇的选择和句式的调整，还包括对原文文化背景和语境的理解。

语义显化的目的是使译文更加清晰、准确，便于目标语言的读者理解。

语义显化要求译者深入理解原文的语义内容。

这包括对词汇、短语、习语以及句子结构的全面把握。

356文|朱明元也谈汉英语义的“隐”与“显”——汉英翻译实践例析摘要：翻译课堂教学应当注重挖掘学生对汉英双语语言的区别性特征的分析能力。

汉语语义往往隐晦，尤其是文学作品中，字面意义之下还有隐含意义。

在汉译英翻译实践中必须注重挖掘汉语作品的字面下的“隐性”意义，在英译的过程中对其进行“显化”，才能最大程度做到忠实于原文。

关键词：隐性意义，显化，汉英翻译Abstract: The ability of the translating class students to probe into the distinguishing characteristics between Chinese and English should be instructed through the process of translating practice. Chinese bears implicit senses, esp. in literary works. It is essential to exploit the implicit senses concealed under Chinese characters. During the C-E translating process, the implicit senses in Chinese should be explicitly revealed so as to be faithful to the original text to the utmost.Key words: implicit sense, to explicitly reveal, C-E translating一、引言数年翻译理论与实践的课堂教学，在课堂与学生分享的汉译英实例中，有摘引大家之译文，也有笔者亲躬并与学生逐词逐句探讨所翻译例优劣之译例。

在此过程中，亦积累了对汉语之“隐性”及英语之“显性”的切身体会，笔者在此尝试以课堂教学之实例来做探讨。

考试与评价·大学英语教研版翻译论坛General Serial No.1082020No.51方伟琴，女，硕士，副教授，研究方向：功能与研学，英语翻译研究，大学英语教学2张顺生，男，硕士生导师，教授，苏州大学、聊城大学兼职翻译专业硕士生导师，研究方向：应用翻译理论与实践，文学翻译，英语教育汉英翻译中的显化现象———以《浮生六记》林译本为例方伟琴1张顺生2（1苏州大学东吴学院，江苏苏州215006；2上海理工大学外语学院，上海200093）摘要：“显化”指一种文体翻译技巧。

本文主要阐述了显化假说、显化分类、显化的研究成果，并在此基础上，从文化显化、语法显化、意义显化三个层面分析《浮生六记》林语堂译本中显化策略的运用，指出显化理论在汉译英中显示出强大的解释力和广泛的适用性。

关键词：《浮生六记》；翻译；文化显化；语法显化；意义显化1.引言法国学者Vinay 与Darbelnet 在Comparative Stylistics of French and English:A Methodology for Translation (《法语和英语的比较文体学:翻译方法论》)中从文体对比研究角度研究法语和英语时提出了“显化”这一术语。

“显化”最早指“一种文体翻译技巧”，指“在目标语中对原语中所隐含的但可以根据情境或情况推断出来的信息加以明示”（Vinay &Darbelnet,1995:342,23）。

目前，人们逐渐对这一现象产生兴趣，对其的研究也取得了一定成果。

然而，人们对显化的研究还不够全面，基于此，本文拟结合林语堂《浮生六记》的英译对这一方面尝试进行解读。

2.显化假说的提出、显化的分类及研究现状1986年，以色列学者Blum-Kulka （2004：92）提出了“显化假说”（the explicitation hypothesis ），即“译者对原文的解释过程可能导致译文比原文冗长。

论英译汉中的显化现象
教材写作是一种不同于一般非文学文本的写作题材,因为教材强调用语精准简练,通过简洁的语言,让学习者迅速领会文章的内容。

因此在教材的写作中,作者也会力求文章的简洁和精练。

但是在翻译的时候,却要根据目标语的语言习惯以及目标读者的阅读习惯来对译文进行处理,一味地追求简洁或许会让读者感到迷惑,但如果通过一定的翻译策略加以处理,不仅不会让原文变得冗余,反而会提高文章的阅读性,增强读者的阅读体验。

而本文作者则是要研究如何通过运用显化策略,既能使译文有效传达原文的信息,又能使译文更能被译语读者所接受。

笔者的翻译实践是之前笔者承接的一个翻译项目,将教育部即将出版的美国国际人力资源协会所著的《人力资源能力提升教程》的第二章翻译成汉语,笔者将原文和译文进行了比较,最终决定选择显化研究策略对译文进行研究。

通过对原文和译文的对比分析,笔者得出的结论是,在对于教材的翻译中,对原文进行显化处理是十分必要的,笔者综合国内各个翻译学者所提出的显化理论,最终笔者
将从以下几个方面入手,对译文进行分析和研究,分别是添加注释、补充扩展原文、添加连接词、重复和添加范畴词来对译文进行细致地探讨和研究。

通过这样的显化策略,能够优先提高译文的质量和可读性,并加强读者的阅读体验和阅读兴趣。