جزوه بررسی آثار ترجمه شده اسلامی2 همراه با تصویر

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The ‘good’ translator

In the course of this investigation, I have drawn a few conclusions about the characteristics of a ‘good’ translator. Of course, I do not attempt to draw up any rules, nor do I claim to be able to recognize a good translator from a bad one; the points I am about to make are to a large extent my own opinions and they are, as I stated in the introduction, chiefly meant to serve as topics for further discussion

The most important thing for any translator is to know the author he translates, in the sense that he is familiar with his objectives for writing, the audience for which the text was originally intended, and any likely or unlikely sources of inspiration for the text. It cannot be denied that all authors are influenced by external phenomena; it might be other authors, deeply religious feelings or a fascination for motion pictures. Likewise, there are external sources which are less likely to influence each particular author: if an author dislikes the works of another author very strongly, he is less inclined to be affected by them, and an author who always lived in a big city would not likely be influenced by rural life. A good translator should be aware of the sources of inspiration and influence for the author whose works he is about to translate . Thus, the translator must be rather well-read, in order to be familiar with the literary sources of inspiration for the author in question. It is also desirable that he is acquainted with the author’s cultural background, to understand particularities which concern the earlier mentioned ’embedding’ in a cultural sphere

The second thing which any translator must be aware of is the TL readers, who may expect an exactly similar reading experience as that of the SL readers. This is an impossible thing, and any translator who aims for that goal must inevitably be disappointed . All readers will not have the same expectations, depending on what background they have, and also on whether or not they have read the original text. If the translator tries to translate and transfer as much as possible in order to get a similar feeling in the TL cultural sphere as the one in the SL text, he will be criticized by readers who want him to keep the SL cultural sphere feeling. My opinion regarding this problem is that what is important is to endeavor to reproduce the general atmosphere of the original in a translated version. This is best done by transferring as much as possible into TL equivalents, which will give those readers who cannot, or do not want to, read the original a reading experience in their own language similar to that of the original readers in the SL.

This leads to a further point which is important in the discussion of the good translator. Naturally, he must possess a stylistic skill in his own language in order to make a tolerable representation of a work in another language. It must not be forgotten, however, that stylistic skill is judged very differently; what is considered well-expressed by one person may very well be discarded as bad language use by someone else

دکتر محمد یزدانی-دانشگاه امام رضا