比例原則與專業翻譯中的資訊扭曲問題

The Information Distortion Problem in Op-Ed Translation: The Principle of Proportionality and Its Applications

本文從Project Syndicate 的新聞同業網站上，選取六篇由當今思想領導人所寫的專欄文章，作為分析的資料。這些文章的譯文乃是出自大陸方面的專業譯者。我們從六篇譯文當中，篩選出二十四組具有爭議性的句子，逐一探討，並且將這些例句的問題分為六大類。透過以效益為依歸的比例原則，我們對翻譯的策略加以探討。我們的看法可歸納為三點：首先，應避免不恰當的句型轉換，或是用相似的意思取代原先的意思。基本上，這類策略的弊多於利。其次，對於轉折語氣與前後呼應兩種狀況，我們希望極力保留，這乃是基於這類語氣的轉達對資訊傳遞的影響事關重大。最後，當譯者處理原文簡約，涵意豐富的狀況時，也可以根據比例原則來決定應該以原文之文字或是完整表達原文所蘊含的涵意為依歸。

We selected six Op-Ed articles written by notable scholars from the Project Syndicate website. These editorials were translated by professional translators from Mainland China. After careful inspection, we chose a total of 24 controversial sentences for our analysis. We examined the translation problems in these sentences and classified these problems into six different categories. According to the principle of proportionality, we suggest that, among other things, inappropriate syntactic transformation, together with irrelevant interpretations should be avoided as much as possible because it normally will create information distortion without the associated benefit of uncovering the professional knowledge that is embedded in the original text. In addition, priority should be given to the preservation of information that is implied in the original text when it does not require a great deal of translation editing. On the contrary, if the amount of editing involved is substantial in relation to the embedded information, the original writing style should be kept intact as much as possible.