On The Unit Of Translation

The unit of translation is very important in translation theory. It bears great significance in the fields of translation practice, translation training and translation criticism. However, although over the years translation theorists have made so many elaborations and analyses about it from many different perspectives, this issue remains disputable until today.Russian translation theorist Barkhudarov once defined the unit of translation, and categorized the unit of translation into the phoneme (grapheme) level, the morpheme level, the word level, the phrase level, the sentence level and the text level. His opinion is very influential, and discussions later are mostly based on it. However, this is static categorization based on modern linguistics, while the meaning of language lies in its use, and translation is also the dynamic use of static language in various specific circumstances. Thus it is more meaningful to study UT from the perspective of speechology.When the unit of translation is viewed from the perspective of speechology, the minimal unit is the utterance, because utterance is the smallest unit of language in use. The inner structure of an utterance can be divided into a theme and a rheme according to Czechic linguist V. Mathesius, and above the utterance are such levels as sentence group, syntagma and discourse.Although such concepts as logeme and culture are raised by some researchers as UTs, but in this paper we hold that the discussion of UT should be based on language itself. At the same time, there is much debate among translation theorists over which one of the UTs should be used in translation. Scholars tend to support one UT and at the same time deny the applicability of other UTs. This paper holds that the translation unit is a diversified and mutually complementary system, and the selection of UT is affected by many factors, such as the relatedness between the source language and the target language, the subject, the text type, the function of the text, the consideration about intended readers, the translator's understanding of the text, the translator's source language and target language proficiency, etc. Only if the study of UT is put in different specific circumstances, can it truly direct translation practice and promote the development of translation theory.