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2023年12月25日发(作者：)

Hermeneutics and Translation Studies

Introduction

The word “hermeneutics” can date back to the messenger “Hermes” in Greek

mythology, who was appointed with a pair of winged sandals and winged cap to be

able to travel swifter than light. It was Hermes who took messages of Zeus to the

world below. Because of confusion of different languages, he was born as an

interpreter and translator. Translation and hermeneutics are similar in many aspects

and there is no translation without understanding and interpreting texts, which is the

initial step in any kinds of translation. Therefore the philosophical branch

“hermeneutics” was introduced into translation studies, which broadened the horizon

of translation theorists and practitioners.

Chapter One Brief Introduction to Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics, the „art of interpretation‟, was originally the theory and method of

interpreting the Bible and other difficult texts. Wilhelm Dilthey extended it to the

interpretation of all human acts and products including history and the interpretation

of a human life. Heidegger, in his Being and Time (1927), gave an interpretation of

human being, the being that itself understands and interprets. Under his influence,

hermeneutics became a central theme of continental philosophy. Scholars of the

school pay attention on the essence of understanding and putting it into use in order to

criticize reason ruling everything in the field of science.

Three great changes were witnessed in the development of Hermeneutics and the

author will elaborate them in the following chapters. The first change is its research

focus from special texts like Bible and classics to secular texts, with Schleiermacher

as the representative welding previous partial theories into systematic discipline. Then

Dilthey and Heigger developed the Methodological Hermeneutics to Ontological

Hermeneutics, broadening the understanding of the text. And the last one is that

hermeneutics is used in practice by Gadamer who put forward “effective history” and

reaffirmed its practical function.

Chapter Two Friedrich Schleiermacher‟s Methodological Hermeneutics

Schleiermacher welded those previous partial theories of different philosophers into a

single discipline. At each level of interpretation we are involved in a hermeneutical

circle. We cannot understand a whole (for example, a text) unless we understand its

parts or the parts unless we understand the whole.

His research started with misunderstanding. Because of difference in time, language,

history, culture and place, misunderstanding is normal and common. In order to avoid

misunderstanding, he put forward reconstruction of language and mentality and two

rules of interpretation: grammatical and psychological. Without considering the writer,

source language was analyzed through comparison and contrast to make sure its rel

meaning. Translators put himself into the writer‟s shoes and try every means to know

his/her physical and mental state.

There are two translation methods for Schleiermacher, of which one is writer-oriented,

leaving the writer alone as much as possible and moving the reader toward the writer.

And the other is opposite, reader-oriented, leaving the reader alone as much as

possible and moving the writer toward the reader. He obviously prefers the latter one,

which will bring the foreignness into German to change the outdated ideas and

literary system.

Chapter Three Martin Heidegger‟s Ontological Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics generate several controversies. In interpreting something do we unearth

the author‟s thoughts and intentions, imagining ourselves in his position? Or do we

relate it to a wider whole that gives it meaning? We cannot understand a whole (for

example, a text) unless we understand its parts or the parts unless we understand the

whole. Heidegger discovered another circle: as we inevitably bring presuppositions to

what we interpret, does this mean that any interpretation is arbitrary, or at least

endlessly revisable?

Heidegger distinguishes between things (whatever-is) and the „world‟, that is, the

context within which they happen to be found. A „world‟ is an arena of human

concerns and interests. The „world‟ of a set of entities is the „being‟ of those entities,

that is, that which lets them be meaningful.

Therefore he opposed the word-for-word translation and determinacy of meaning. in

order to gain the real meaning of the text, context should be included in consideration.

Instead of words and phrases, thoughts of the writer should be transferred from one

language to another. But there are some essential things which can not heard or read

from language. Therefore he began to deconstruct these limitations laying a solid

foundation to Derida‟s deconstructionism.

Chapter Four Wilhelm Dilthey and Hans-Georg Gadamer

4.1 Wilhelm Dilthey

Hermeneutically conceived, understanding is a process of interpreting the

„objectifications of life‟, the external expressions or manifestations of human thought

and action. Interpersonal understanding is attained through these common

objectifications and not, as is widely believed, through empathy. He thought every

text can be read and understood even if we do not know the writer‟s life and

environment. Besides that, every person can understand the text in his/her own way

not as same as the writer. Because the key point of understanding is subjective

experience which also belongs to the reader.

4.2 Hans-Georg Gadamer‟s Philosophical Hermeneutics

In contrast to a traditional, Aristotelian view of language where spoken words

represent mental images and written words are symbols for spoken words,

Gadamerian perspective on linguistics emphasizes a fundamental unity between

language and human existence. Interpretation can never be divorced from language or

objectified. Because language comes to humans with meaning, interpretations and

understandings of the world can never be prejudice-free. As human beings, one cannot

step outside of language and look at language or the world from some objective

standpoint.

Like Heidegger, Gadamer rejects the idea of hermeneutics as merely a method for the

human and historical sciences comparable to the method of the natural sciences.

Philosophical hermeneutics is instead about a process of human understanding that is

inevitably circular because we come to understand the whole through the parts and the

parts through the whole. Understanding in this sense is not an „act‟ that can be secured

methodically and verified objectively. It is an „event‟ or „experience‟ that we undergo.

Philosophical hermeneutics advocates a mediated approach to self-understanding on

the model of a conversation with the texts and works of others.

By grounding understanding in language and dialogue as opposed to subjectivity,

Gadamer‟s philosophical hermeneutics avoids the danger of arbitrariness in

interpreting the works of others.

Chapter Five Francis George Steiner

Francis George Steiner, in his After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation

(1975), defines hermeneutics as “the investigation of what it means to understand a

piece of oral and written speech, and the attempt to diagnose this process in terms of a

general model meaning”. He thought translation was understanding and understanding

is a fusion of horizon. Interpreters or translators should respect the tradition which is

influencing him/her. And he/she should actively promote the fusion of his/her horizon

with the writer‟s in a cross-cultural context.

He focuses his attention on translators‟ four moves. The first move is initiative trust,

in the translation case, the translator should consider the source text to stand for

something in the world, a coherent “something” that can be translated; therefore, in

nonsense rhymes and the like “are untranslatable because they are lexically

noncommunicative or deliberately insignificant”. The second move is aggression,

“incursive and extractive” move of the translator. The other two moves are

incorporation (or embodiment) and compensation (or restitution). Steiner sees the

imbalance of translation arises from an outflow of energy from the source and an

inflow into the receptor, he claims, that balance can only be restored by the act of

compensation.

Steiner was criticized for his extensive reference to Chomsky‟s target culture grammar

as a support for a universalist view of language, and thus an all-embracing theory of

translation, now seem dated. And he was severely criticized by feminists for its

violent male-centric sexual imagery for his description of aggression as penetration.

However, Steiner‟s After Babel takes a historical perspective on translation studies;

we still consider it to be the key advance of the hermeneutics of translation.

Chapter Six Conclusion

In a long time, people thought that interpretation towards the original text is just a

matter of linguistics/language. Scholars of hermeneutics widen the category of

understanding, which is influenced by many factors such as history, time, textuality

and audience. In fact, it is definitely not an objective and smooth process.

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