從英譯中談深層結構與翻譯

Deep Structure and Translation: Examined from English to Chinese Examples

本文以三種語言現象：名詞＋of＋名詞、作格動詞和關係子句來討論不同語言中的相通性。有人認為巴別塔之後，上帝變亂了人類的語言，但翻譯的進展四乎挑戰了上帝的作為。本文舉出許多例子，以Nida & Taber的倒回轉換的方式，一步步推回，找出其深層結構，以此論證不同語言之間雖然表層結構不同，但在了解語意時，一種不屬於任何語言的抽象表述卻同樣存在各種語言中。不僅幾位著名翻譯學者，Chomsky雖然不談翻譯，其所謂的普遍語法中，其實也包含了抽象表述的概念。與其說翻譯可能挑戰了上帝的巴別塔計畫，不如說是上帝的憐憫，保留了人類語言中的共通性，使人得以學習外語，也使人類的語言可以互譯。It is said that the story of Babel Tower has been challenged because the development of translation. This paper explores three constructions from English-Chinese translation: Noun Phrases formed with Noun+ of + Noun, Ergative sentences and Relative Clauses to discuss the structure sameness among human languages. With the ideas of Nida & Taber's back-transformations, the author tries to find the deep-structures of sentences with these constructions. Given the same meaning, it is displayed that languages may have different surface structures. However, they actually share the same deep structure if processed backward step by step with the transformational rules that the sentences have come through. This indicates that there is an abstract semantic representation for each sentence. The semantic representation not only plays a crucial role in manifesting meaning, but also exists in all human languages. The author further illustrates that the representation is neutral and may not be what people hear or read, but it is this neutral representation that makes translation between languages possible. Moreover, this paper connects Bell's universal semantic representation, Malone's abstract syntactic representation and Nida & Taber's go-between language with Chomsky's concept of universal grammar. With illustrations, the author claims that the universal principles shared by human languages, in addition to neutral representation for each sentence in languages, makes translation possible. The author concludes that when God confused the language of the whole world, it was probably God's mercy to preserve the sameness of human languages to a certain degree. Therefore, the challenge to the story of Babel Tower may turn out not to be a challenge at all.