翻译中“雅”的美学思辩

An Aesthetic Study of“Elegance”, One of the Goals of Translation Proposed by Yan Fu

严复是我国翻译史上最有影响的翻译家之一。他在《天演论·译例言》中所感叹的“译事三难,信达雅”,被译界奉为翻译标准,风靡中国译坛近一个世纪之久。然而长期以来,翻译理论界对其中的雅字在认识上还存在着很大的分歧。本文试从美学的角度对有关雅的种种质疑加以分析,希望能解决一些悬而未决的问题。

“Faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance”, the “three difficulties of translation” pointed out by Yan Fu, have long been taken for the three criteria of translation by Chinese translators. Among the three, however, the “elegance” caused quite a few academic arguments in the circle of translation. On the basis of an aesthetic analysis of these arguments, this paper holds that the “elegance” is an aesthetic concept, which, as one of the criteria of translation, is not only reasonable but also necessary.