Translational ethics and electronic technologies（平移伦理和电子技术）.pdf

Translational ethics and electronic technologies Anthony Pym Intercultural Studies Group Universitat Rovira i Virgili Tarragona, Spain Paper delivered to the VI Seminário de Tradução Científica e Técnica em Língua Portuguesa A Profissionalização do Tradutor, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, 11 November 2003. Publication in the corresponding proceedings. ere we will model some simple relations between ethics and mediation Htechnologies such as email, the Internet, and translation memories, all of which are radically transforming the translation profession. Our concern will be with the wider, philosophical sense of ethics as a set of problems concerning social relations. We will not be particularly worried about professional codes of ethics, with deontology, understood here as sets of rules established by professional associations in particular times and places. We are happy enough that the deontological exists. Yet it is not on that level that electronic technologies present the problems that concern us. A basis in fidelity A traditional ethics of translation is founded on the notion of fidelity. The translator, we are told, should be faithful to the source text, or to the source author, or to the intention of the text or author, or to something in that general direction (two thousand years of translation theory and deceptive prefaces have given us many variants). Whatever the nature of that fidelity (faithful like a dog to its master?, or like a person with faith?, or even like someone acting badly but in good faith?), some broad strokes might paint a general ideology since the Renaissance: - Fidelity traditionally concerns the individual translator, usually in a relation with the individual text or author. - The thing to which the individual translator is ideally faithful is on the source side of business, not on the target or receiver’s side. - Beyond those two constraints,