威廉·布莱克《老虎》重译记

Retranslating The Tyger through

本文由两部分组成。第一部分记录笔者于2022虎年新年前夕在微信群聊“中国语言学人论坛”上发起的翻译威廉·布莱克《老虎》诗的始末。第二部分说明笔者为何选择四言一顿的八言体翻译这首诗,解读诗中描写老虎及其造就者所用的词语,揭示诗中第2阕里the wings的所有者,阐述笔者在翻译过程中为使译文的格律贴近原诗的格律而对原诗语序和措辞所做的6处变通。文章末尾是笔者2月4日发表在《英语世界》微信公众号“诗苑”上的《老虎》中译本及其修订本。

This article consists of two parts.The first part documents the whole process of retranslating William Blake's poem The Tyger into Chinese by crowdsourcing,which I launched in the WeChat group Chinese Linguists'Forum on the eve of the Chinese New Year in 2022--the Year of the Tiger.The second part explains why I have chosen to translate the poem into tetrameter rhyming couplets with a pause after the first two meters,interprets the phrases Blake uses in describing the tiger and its creator,reveals the owner of the“wings”in the poem's second stanza,and expounds on the six adaptations I have made to the original poem in terms of word order and diction so as to maintain the Chinese version's close resemblance to its English original in terms of metrical pattern.At the end of this article are presented,side by side,my translation of the poem published on the webpage Poetry Garden of the bilingual journal World of English on 4 February and its revised version.