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Past the Fire’s Edge: Figures of Translation from Herodotos 1.86
Translation Review Pub Date : 2017-09-02 , DOI: 10.1080/07374836.2017.1359128
D. M. Spitzer

The first Book of Herodotos’sHistories, published in the mid-fifth century BCE, projects a scene of translation. After a battle between the Lydian and Persian armed forces under the commands, respectively, of Kroisos and Kyros (ca. 546 BCE), the defeated king of Lydia, Kroisos, is placed while still alive on a pyre. In a moment of reflection, Kroisos calls out the name of an Athenian statesman, Solon, who had once visited him. Three times the foreign name sounds: Solon. Provoked by this outburst, Kyros dispatches translators to put Kroisos to the test (ἐπειρέσθαι) [Hdt. 1.86.4]. Bound and upon a pyre at the edge of a ruined city, Kroisos recalls under duress the wisdom of Solon: “of the living, no one is blesséd” [Hdt. 1.86.3]. The pyre already flares when the translation of Kroisos’s statement reaches Kyros. Although Kyros is so moved by the thought that he commands his subordinates to release Kroisos, the fire has matured and cannot be extinguished, and it appears Kroisos cannot be saved. Kroisos once more intones a name, the name of a Greek deity, and in response to Kroisos’s call, the god Apollo extinguishes the pyre. Alongside Rosemary Arrojo, this article seeks “to examine the powerful role of fiction as theory,” even against objections that Herodotos writes not fiction but history: at least in the case of narrating events from a distant past, such as the one involvingKyros andKroisos, a fictionality resounds from the very possibility of writing such a narrative with direct speech and an interiority assigned to characters. Herodotos’s narrative, with its multiple voices and characters, offers a text “beyond the limits of what we conventionally call theory or philosophy,” as Arrojo writes, that can open “usually unchartered areas such as the more personal relationships involving the various agents engaged in the construction of meaning that defines writing, reading, interpreting, and translating.” The passage from Herodotos presents a complex of translativemoments, and the central concern of this article lies in tracing the theoretics produced by theway(s) the scene stages various levels and forms of translative and translational action. The former includes actions that resemble translation, such as the firing of bricks in Genesis 11, which Jacques Derrida observes as figuring translation but does not pursue in his reading of the tower of Babel early in the essay “Des tours de Babel.” Translational moments, on the other hand, refer to interor intra-linguistic exchanges, where speech is transformed from one language to another, or from one expression to another within one language.

中文翻译:

越过火的边缘:希罗多德的翻译图 1.86

公元前 5 世纪中叶出版的第一本希罗多德的历史书描绘了一个翻译场景。在分别由 Kroisos 和 Kyros(约公元前 546 年)指挥的吕底亚和波斯武装部队之间进行了一场战斗之后,被击败的吕底亚国王 Kroisos 被放置在一个柴堆上,而他还活着。思索片刻,克罗伊索斯唤出了曾经拜访过他的雅典政治家梭伦的名字。外文名字的三声读音:梭伦。受到这次爆发的激怒,Kyros 派遣翻译人员对 Kroisos 进行测试 (ἐπειρέσθαι) [Hdt. 1.86.4]。克罗伊索斯被绑在一座废墟城市边缘的柴堆上,在胁迫下回忆起梭伦的智慧:“生者,无人得福”[Hdt. 1.86.3]。当 Kroisos 声明的翻译到达 Kyros 时,柴堆已经燃烧起来。虽然基洛斯一想到要命令部下放出克洛伊索斯,心里就很感动,但火势已经成熟,无法扑灭,看来克洛伊索斯也救不了了。Kroisos 再次吟诵一个名字,一个希腊神的名字,为了响应 Kroisos 的召唤,阿波罗神熄灭了火堆。与罗斯玛丽·阿罗霍一起,这篇文章试图“研究小说作为理论的强大作用”,甚至反对希罗多德写的不是小说而是历史的反对意见:至少在叙述遥远过去的事件的情况下,例如涉及凯罗斯和克罗伊索斯的事件,虚构性源自于用直接的语言和赋予角色的内在性来写这样一个叙事的可能性。希罗多德的叙述,以其多重声音和人物,正如阿罗霍所写,它提供了“超出了我们通常所说的理论或哲学的界限”的文本,它可以打开“通常未知的领域,例如涉及参与定义写作、阅读、口译和翻译。” 希罗多德的段落呈现了一个复杂的翻译时刻,本文的中心关注在于追溯由场景阶段不同层次和形式的翻译和翻译行为所产生的理论。前者包括类似于翻译的动作,例如创世记 11 章中的烧砖,雅克·德里达认为这是比喻翻译,但在他在文章“Des tours de Babel”的早期阅读巴别塔时并没有追求。另一方面,平移时刻
更新日期:2017-09-02
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