AnInterviewwithDr_EugeneNida.pdf

An Interview w ith Dr. Eugene Nida JFL Correspondent 提要:著名美国语言学家和翻译家尤金 奈达博士访问上海外国语大学并参加 97 上外翻译研讨会期间, 曾接 受本刊记者采访,并愉快地回答了记者的提问。本刊现将部分访谈记录整理发表。访谈内容涉及翻译与实践 的联系、语言研究和翻译研究的关系、对建立翻译学的看法、翻译与文化、动态对等、欧美翻译研究的最新发展 等。 关键词:翻译, 语言,文化 Abstract: Dur ing Dr . Eugene N ida s stay in Shanghai in October 1997, our JFL ( Journal of For eign L anguages ) correspondent had an interview w ith him. The follow ing tex t contains some of t he questions and answ ers concerning t he relationship betw een the theo ret ical studies and practice of translation, between linguist ic and translation studies, how culture is asso ciated w ith translation act ivities and his views on dynamic equivalence, on translatolog y and the latest developments in translation studies and practice in Europe and Amer ica. Key words: tr anslation, language, cultur e JFL: Some people say that your theories concerning t ranslat ing are built on your experience gained in t ranslating the Bible. What do you think about such statements? Nida: I can w ell understand why people w ould think this, but in fact my basic principles about translat ion developed long before I worked w ith Bible t ranslators. On the basis of my studies in the Classics at UCLA I w as amazed to f ind that for the most part the Greek and Latin authors had been much more intelligibly t ranslated than the Bible. Furthermore, my professors refused to have us produce literal t ranslations since in their judgment such translat ions would inevitably re- sult in students failing to appreciate the style of the Greek and Lat in tex ts. In addition, literal translat ions also result in bad habits in w rit ing one s ow n language. M y g raduate w ork in Patris- t ics at the University of Southern California and later doctoral studies at the U niversity of M ich-i g an in linguistics and cultural anthropology further convinced me that for the most part Bible translat ing falls far behind other t ranslat ing in intelligibility of content and acceptability of style