Wierzbicka's point here goes beyond merely arguing for a limited acceptance of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. She maintains that what people like Pinker end up doing is " 'deifying' some words from their own native language and reifying the concepts encapsulated in them" . She is thus arguing that a view in which there is no room for relativity is ethnocentric. It is an argument similar to Venuti's rejection of the universal as ethnocentric.
Interestingly, a number of other linguists have maintained that universality and relativity are not entirely opposed. Slobin (2003), for example, argues that there is an activity of "thinking for speaking" , when "thinking takes on a particular quality, in that " one fits one's thoughts into available linguistic forms"; to take up Schopenhauer's notion, one "thinks differently in every language (Robinson 2002:248). In other words, when getting ready to speak a particular language it is necessary to adopt (or one cannot help adopting) the mindset of that language. For translation, this suggests that, though individual languages may not represent an implacable, unique, untranslatable reality, they may nevertheless tend to relate to a particular mindset. For this reason Slobin (2003:164) posits a "thinking for translating". He mentions research by Ervin (1964:506), which suggests that bilingual speakers in general reveal different 'personalities' in using each of their languages". It is a view in fact quite compatible with Schleiermacher's notion of the "spirit" of a particular language (Robinson 2002:208), or Ortega Y Gasset's style" of a language (1992:96). In section 5.5 we will look at an example where the mind style in a text can be linked to an intrinsic feature of the language, and will consider the consequences this has for translation.
Both Hyde's observations and Slobin's have potentially profound consequences for translation. Hyde would see a mitigation of the effects of cultural relativism not in universality, but in the particular nature of literature which circumvents the potential hindrance of an indissoluble culture-language tie. And Slobin would want to mitigate against universalism not by dint of a fixed cultural relativism but because of a pragmatic, momentary, speech-situation relativism. Where both these views tend is towards seeing translation, especially of literature, and especially if it is a literary, estranging, foreignizing translation in Venuti's sense, as a way of both recognizing the culture-boundedness of language and also being free from it.
In particular, Slobin's "thinking for translating" could lead us to speculate that, just as we take on a particular thought mode when about to put thoughts into words, so we must do when reading a text with the specific intention of translating it. And, just as elements of "thinking for speaking" must be stored in the mind to be used whenever one speaks (Slobin 1996), so a translator might store knowledge of how to read for translation. There are no studies of such a phenomenon, though think-aloud protocols may go some way to furnish data, so the idea of such a mode of thought remains purely speculative. There are many studies that suggest different modes of reading: literary reading involves reading for style, suspending disbelief, or reading for maximum relevance, whereas these issues play less role in non-literary reading. So it seems reasonable to posit a type of reading especially adapted to translation; indeed, both de Beaugrande and Bell provide evidence for this view. Such "reading for translation" might involve critical, literary reading (if the text is literary) but also an awareness of how what is said in the source language could be said in the target language, and of the differences between the two, including the sort of stylistic differences documented so meticulously by Vinay & Darbelnet.
"Thinking for speaking", "thinking for translating" and "reading for translating" thus all suggest that language influences thought at least momentarily. These notions also suggest that human minds are flexible enough to change mode and to see the world from different points of view, and also to know that others are doing so. And they appear to avoid both a narrow interpretation of Sapir-Whorf relativism and too great an emphasis on universalism.
上一篇：代名词的翻译
下一篇：“在……上”等等的翻译
微信公众号搜索“译员”关注我们，每天为您推送翻译理论和技巧，外语学习及翻译招聘信息。