ABSTRACT

Jiří Levý’s article Translation as a decision process (1967), one of the earliest contributions to the topic of decision-making in translation, anticipates a model that was proposed more than two decades later: Optimality Theory. This linguistic theory offers a framework for resolving conflicts in grammar by replacing absolute rules with violable constraints whose interaction leads to the selection of an acceptable output. The philosophy of Optimality Theory can be successfully applied to the process of translatorial decision-making, which consists in proposing a set of candidates and selecting the best one by virtue of constraints imposed by the translation strategy adopted. The article shows how such a constraint-based approach can be used in legal translation. A tentative set of constraints (Minimum equivalence, Near-equivalence, Literal, Identity, Functional, Transparent, Neutral) is used to evaluate French translation candidates for an English legal term, applying two different strategies: documentary (source-culture oriented) and instrumental (target-culture oriented). The formalism of Optimality Theory, while mimicking real-life decision-making processes, makes the selection of optimal equivalents more transparent and coherent. However, it is only one of the possible tools that legal translators and translation students have at their disposal.

摘要

Jiří Levý 的文章《翻译作为决策过程》（1967 年）是对翻译决策主题的最早贡献之一，它预见了二十多年后提出的模型：最优理论。这种语言理论提供了一个解决语法冲突的框架，通过用违反的约束代替绝对规则，这些约束的相互作用导致选择可接受的输出。最优理论的哲学可以成功地应用于翻译决策过程，其中包括提出一组候选者并根据所采用的翻译策略所施加的约束来选择最好的一个。本文展示了如何在法律翻译中使用这种基于约束的方法。一组暂定的约束（最小对等、近似对等、字面、同一性、功能、透明、中性）用于评估英语法律术语的法语翻译候选，应用两种不同的策略：纪录片（面向源文化）和工具（面向目标文化） 。最优理论的形式主义在模仿现实生活决策过程的同时，使得最优等价物的选择更加透明和连贯。然而，它只是法律翻译人员和翻译学生可以使用的可能工具之一。