Translation Studies From The Rhetoric Perspective

Translation Studies has gone through three research paradigms, which are literature-artistic paradigm, structural paradigm and deconstructionist paradigm. Because of deconstructionist paradigm, Translation Studies turns to culture, then occurs pan-culture trend in which Translation Studies is far from text and language. Pan-culture trend has expanded the boundary of Translation Studies, but has submerged it and challenged its independence as a discipline. In order to construct an independent discipline with realistic and wide field of vision, the study of translation should return to language, text and their cultural context. Both translatology and rhetoric are comprehensive disciplines on speech communication, and they have many similarities and cross fields, so we believe that, thanks to absorbing rhetoric theories and research approach, Translation Studies can combine text’s inside (language) with its outside (culture).Rhetoric theories are very profound and broad, absorbing theories from E. Husserl, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin, Kenneth Burke, Jurgen Habermas, Wayne Booth and Michel Foucault. These theories are not only theoretic foundation of Rhetoric, but also theoretic resources for Translation Studies.Since1950s,New Rhetoric Movement has arisen in western world, then more and more philosophers come to realize that the use of language is rhetoric, and that rhetoric is everywhere beyond rhetorical skills, and it constructs ideas and knowledge instead of just decorating ideas. In a word, rhetoric is people’s instinctive acts. As one of the greatest Western rhetorician of the20th century, Kenneth Burke gives main thoughts:(1) In order to co-exist in the world, people always use rhetoric to identify them with other people. So the nature of rhetoric is identification, which leads to cooperation.(2) Language is a symbolic action, and all languages have persuading motives in order to induce actions and construct reality.(3)The core of Burke’s rhetoric is Dramatistic Language View. According to Burke, all the human activities can be regarded as dramas, and all people are actors with certain motives. So he points out that, rhetoric includes five basic dramatic elements, that is, act, scene, agent, agency and purpose. Burke’s rhetoric thoughts contribute a lot to New Rhetoric Movement. As we know, the most important factors of rhetoric process include agents, purpose or motive, agency or methods, scenes and effects. When we study translation from the perspective of rhetoric, we come to the conclusion that translation is indeed a cross-cultural rhetoric process. Translation is a cross-cultural communication, so translator, has to consider many factors, that is, his translating purpose(rhetoric motive), original text and translated text(rhetoric text), audience, translating methods, contexts and effects. From the view of rhetoric, we can grasp a complete view of translating process and clearly realize its complexity.In addition to Western rhetoric, we find that translations studies can also be benefited from Chinese Rhetoric, which is now turning to General Rhetotic. General rhetoric approach includes three aspects:rhetoric skills, rhetoric literature, and rhetoric philosophy. It is proved that general rhetoric approach is beneficial to Translation Studies and practice. If translators apply general rhetorical analysis into original texts, they will deepen their understanding of the original texts’content and form, and then choose accurate rhetorical expression from the target language. In addition, the method is greatly helpful for critics to judge the quality of translation objectively and completely.As to the contribution of this paper, we find that, there were many short papers talking about rhetoric skills in translation, while this doctoral paper is the first one to absorb rhetoric theories and research approach into Translation Studies, and it is the first one to study translation from the rhetoric perspective. Therefore, this cross-disciplinary study will help Translation Studies to return to language and text, to combine language with culture, and to widen its field of vision and deepen its research. Thus the sound development of disciplinary construction of translatology in our country can be assured.