译者能力研究是继翻译研究“译者转向”之后受到广泛关注的话题。现有研究多聚焦译者子能力的分类,试图穷尽译者应具备的所有能力,但翻译的跨学科属性使得子能力不断增多,不仅令翻译研究与译者实际能力产生时间差,也加剧了对于译者能力本质界定不清的现状。在知识翻译学和知识管理视域下,以广义知识为考察译者能力的起点,提出译者能力的知识观,把一切后天习得的译者能力还原为知识,认为译者能力包含翻译陈述性知识、翻译程序性知识和翻译元知识。译者能力本质上是在不断练习的基础上形成的结构化的翻译陈述性知识和可以按一定规则执行的翻译程序性知识的集合,是两种知识通过翻译元知识的管理、指导和调控在翻译活动中的主体化,而译者能力增长的实质是翻译陈述性知识、程序性知识量的积累、质的提升、结构的优化,以及翻译元知识调控能力的不断加强。

“Translator competence” has received widespread attention following the “translator turn” in translation studies. Existing research has primarily focused on the classification of translator sub-competences, attempting to exhaustively identify all the abilities that translators should possess. However, the interdisciplinary nature of translation studies constantly expands the number of sub-competences, a situation that not only results in a time lag between translation research and translators’ actual abilities but exacerbates the current ambiguity in defining translator competence. This paper, based on the epistemological interpretation of translation and knowledge management and by taking generalized knowledge as the starting point for examining translator competence, proposes a knowledge-oriented approach to translator competence and conceptualizes all acquired postnatal translator competences as knowledge. It argues that translator competence comprises translational declarative knowledge, translational procedural knowledge and translational metaknowledge; translator competence is, in essence, an integration of structured translational declarative knowledge acquired through continuous practice and translational procedural knowledge that can be applied according to certain rules, and it is the embodiment of these two types of knowledge in translation activities under the management, guidance, and regulation of translational metaknowledge; the nature of translator competence development lies in the quantitative accumulation and qualitative improvement of translational declarative and procedural knowledge, the optimization of their structures, and the ever-strengthened regulation of translational metaknowledge.