不可译性及其补偿方法

Linguistic and cultural differences,the two categories of untranslatability phenomenon are causedby different factors.These resulting from the linguistic differences will hardly change while thoseresulting from cultural differences may become translatable in the future by using the methods ofcompensation and the skill of translators.2.Linguistic untranslatabilityProfessor Liu Miqing wrote in his Modem Translation Theories that"The structure of languagecommonly shows the characteristics of the language,these characteristics only can be found inrelative language,the similar transfer is difficult to find in non-relative language,for it need tochange the code completely."[4]P107 View from the etymology,English belongs to theIndo-European language,but Chinese belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language,so there exit thelinguistic untranslatability,which includes the following aspects:phonology,character,figure ofspeech,and so on.2.1.Untranslatability in phonologyAny language has its own special phonemic system,which cannot be replaced by other language.There are large differences between Chinese and English,and most of the pronunciations in onelanguage do not have equivalent in the other language.Therefore,they can not be translated intothe target language.For example:(1)“石诗士施氏，嗜狮，誓食十狮.”The author wrote the whole passage in homophone words.This is a typical example ofuntranslatability caused by phonemic system.See another example:2)“Cat,cat,cat,catch the fat rat fast.”If translate it into:“猫，猫，猫，快抓住那只肥老鼠”that will lose the phonemic effect,.and it onlytranslates the meaning.2.2.Untranslatability in character structureChinese words consist of characters that have their meaning,but English words consist ofalphabets that are meaningless.They are completely different in writing.Chinese has a writingskill of describing characters,for example::(3)“人曾为僧，人弗可以成佛，女卑为婢，女又何妨成奴”，“鸿是江边鸟，蚕是天下虫”，“琴瑟琵琶八大王，王王在上，魑魅魍艇四小鬼，鬼鬼s靠边”。They are all using the special feature of Chinese characters,.to describe the characterstructure in poetry,also having their meaning.But English has no such structures in alphabeticalsystem,so they are absolutely untranslatable.Some riddles that are relative to the structure of characters or English words are alsountranslatable,for example::(4)“田头长草”（苗），“What makes a road broad?”(The letter B).Ifthe latter riddle is translated into:“什么使道路变宽？”（字母B)Everybody will fell ridiculous,and no one can understand that.2.3.Untranslatability in figure of speechMost of the languages have their own figures of speech.Just because of the existence of figure ofspeech,the languages become vivid and interesting.In translation practice,if the target languagecan not show the figure of speech in source language correctly,it is not faithful to the content,thought and style of the source language.Although the meanings are similar,it will less thelanguage influence of the source text.The people who speak Chinese and the people who speak