What is translation theory?

1, translation theory of linguistic school

Augustine developed Aristotle's "sign" theory and put forward the triangular relationship between signifier, signified and translator's judgment of language signs, which created the linguistic tradition of western translation theory. At the beginning of the 20th century, Saussure put forward the theory of general linguistics, which marked the birth of modern linguistics and laid the foundation for various linguistic methods of contemporary translation studies. Although there are various representative figures and theoretical methods of different schools, they have a common feature, that is, taking language as the core and studying the equivalence of translation from the structural characteristics of language.

2. Interpretative translation theory.

Hermeneutics is a discipline about understanding, interpretation and its methodology, which has a long history and can be traced back to ancient Greece. In Greek mythology, Hermes was the messenger responsible for interpreting, translating and conveying the Oracle. Hermeneutics in ancient Greece is mainly used to explain logic, debate and some religious and literary classics, with the aim of eliminating ambiguity and misunderstanding of the text. In the Middle Ages, hermeneutics became a branch of biblical studies, which clarified God's intention to man through the annotation and explanation of religious classics. During the Renaissance and the Reformation, the research field of hermeneutics was no longer limited to religious classics, but extended to the interpretation of the whole ancient cultural classics.

Translation theories, that is, theories involved in the translation process, can be directly described and obtained through training, while others can only stay at the theoretical level.

Famous translation theories include Yan Fu's "faithfulness and elegance", Christina Nord's "functionalism" and Eugene Nida's "functional equivalence".