An Ethical Approach to the Contradiction Between the Evaluative World and the Factual World

In the turn from the prescriptive approach to the descriptive, there is also a distinction in translation studies between the evaluative world and the factual world. The connotation and research focus of the two worlds show an obvious contradictions. Scholars still lack a clear understanding of the contradiction, which is reflected in people’s attention to the opposition of the two worlds and ignorance about their internal complementarity and unity. Simple cutting or mechanical superposition of the two worlds may lead to wrong understanding, which is not conducive to the benign development of translation studies. Whereas the evaluative world pursues the idealization and universality of translation standards in prescriptive research, the factual world tends to refine the objectivity and scientificity of translation theory in descriptive research. The two worlds are of dynamic and continuous unity of the opposites. Morality and value, as rational ethics and practical ethics, naturally promote the connection and interaction between the two worlds. By way of translation ethics, the two worlds join hands to go back to value and practice, and complete the historical mission of combining morality and value, and theory and practice.