Millianism and Translation

According to Millianism about proper names, what a proper name semantically contributes to the sentence in which it figures is simply its referent; therefore, co-referring proper names are intercheangable salva veritate and salva significatione. In their 2019 paper published in Topoi, Felappi and Santambrogio formulate a thought-provoking argument against Millianism. Their argument aims at establishing that our normal practice of translation shows that Millianism cannot be correct. I argue that Millians can successfully reply. I will address in turn two versions of Felappi and Santambrogio’s argument, focusing especially on the second one, which apparently raises a more challenging problem for Millianism. Finally, I will consider two objections against my own strategy, and I will reply to them.

     

道安之佛经翻译及翻译思想考述

道安是中国历史上重要的佛教学者和僧团领袖。虽不通梵语,但他整理考校旧译佛经,主持并参与佛经翻译,对佛教中国化功不可没。他从亲身实践中总结出的五失本,三不易等翻译思想也为后世佛经翻译奠定了理论基础,对佛经翻译产生了深远的影响。本文考察道安对佛经翻译事业的贡献及其翻译思想。     

Sentential Connectives and Translation

In the first exposition of the doctrine of indeterminacy of translation, Quine asserted that the individuation and translation of truth-functional sentential connectives like ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘not’ are not indeterminate. He changed his mind later on, conjecturing that some sentential connectives might be interpreted in different non-equivalent ways. This issue has not been debated much by Quine, or in the subsequent literature, it is, as it were, an unsolved problem, not well understood. For the sake of the argument, I will adopt Quine’s background assumption that all the semantic features of a language can be reduced to the speakers’ dispositions toward assent and dissent, as far as only the truth-conditional core of the meaning of sentences is concerned. I will put forward an argument to the effect that the speech dispositions of most, if not all, English (French, Italian, etc.) speakers constrain a unique translation of their connectives. This argument crucially relies on an empirical conjecture concerning the behaviour of these operators.     

《马克思的幽灵》中译本的意义与翻译问题指瑕

在德里达众多的著作中,《马克思的幽灵》(以下简称《幽灵》)极其重要,它对我们理解西方哲学和发展马克思主义都具有重要意义。因此,这一文本的翻译也就特别重要。为此,笔者试图就《幽灵》中译本的重要意义及其翻译问题做一点评,以求教于学界同仁。简单回顾一下《幽灵》一书出版前后我国学界对这本书的研究,可以使我们更深刻地理解本书的意义。在本书中译本出版之前,我国马克思主义哲学界对德里达的研究并不多。本书出版之后,马上引起了许多马克思主义哲学研究者的注意。2000年陈学明撰写了《为马克思辩护》[1]、《对福山福音书的有力驳斥》[…     

Relative motion: Translation and therapy

The central argument is that analysts/therapists and translators/interpreters have a great deal more in common than is commonly supposed. The key element in this sharing is their essential aloneness in the moment and act of interpreting, and their intellectual and affective response to that aloneness. What marks this off as both important and exceptional is its contrast with the untroubling world of study and the comforting world of professional membership and practice. The professional worlds are abundantly documented; the individual experience has had nothing like so much attention. The focus of the argument is on how significant meanings are established, in a context in which no meanings can be taken for granted. The purpose of the argument is to show that each kind of practitioner may have much to learn from the other.     

德里达：翻译与解构

德里达认为,自柏拉图以来的西方理性主义有一个根本的错误,即都在寻找某些“超验所指”(在任何语言中的任何时间都表达同样概念的所指),并以它们为中心,建构起具有等级秩序的逻各斯中心主义。要解构逻各斯中心主义,必须先解构其赖以生存的“可译性”基础。这样,解构问题转化为翻译问题。翻译,特别是语际翻译,见证、展现和诠释了能指与所指的分裂、所指/概念/意义自身的分裂、语言的(内部的和外部的)分裂以及文本的(内部的和外部的)分裂。在这一切发生的同时,翻译也撕裂了自身。它不再担“翻译”的名,而蜕化为无限暧昧的“变形”(transformation)概念,德里达用莎士比亚名剧《威尼斯商人》中的一句话“when mercy seasonsjustice”(情理兼顾)揭示了其内涵。     

Analysis as Translation

Different notions of analysis have been both theorized and put to use in early analytic philosophy. Two of them stand out: connective analysis and analysis as paraphrase. The latter played a central role in the development of analytic philosophy from Frege to Quine and beyond. With the advent of formal semantics of natural language in the 1970s, paraphrase came to be characterizable as translation into a formal “target language”. While I claim that the method cannot achieve its original philosophical aims, I insist that, in spite of them, it is far from being a theoretically empty operation and that it lives on in some contemporary philosophical enterprises.

     

论Empathy的翻译及其内涵

"共情"(Empathy)是十分重要的心理现象,影响着人们的社会认知和实际的人际交往;共情更是临床心理学中的专业术语,直接关系到医患关系的建立以及治疗和治愈的效果。针对目前国内心理学界对于Empathy的不同理解乃至使用上的混乱,文章从该术语的起源和本义,以及其专业内涵和翻译的意义等方面,提出了独到的见解和主张。