托妮·莫里森的人物命名方式及其翻译

Toni Morrison's Appellation of Her Characters and Their Chinese Translation

美国黑人女作家托妮·莫里森在其作品中展现了多姿多彩的人物命名方式 ,利用人物的姓名反映他们的个性 ,暗示他们的命运 ,表现美国黑人的自我意识和文化归属意识 ,使人物姓名成为表现主题的工具、解读作品的扣结。因为这些名字被赋予了丰富的文化内涵 ,超出作为指代特定人物的符号的范畴 ,不宜简单地音译 ,而应根据每个名字相应的文化内涵 ,灵活多变地采取音译、意译、转译。

In her seven novels published so far, Toni Morrison has employed a variety of appellation for her characters. These unorthodox and symbolically loaded names, and in some cases, the absence of names, contribute to her characterization, plotting and theme revelation. Much, if not all, of the flavor will be lost with the transliteration of them into Chinese. It is, therefore, sometimes more adequate to translate their meaning into equivalent Chinese characters or phrases, to find a character or a phrase that can keep the original implication in one way or another, or simply leave the English name as it is, giving an explanation in an annotation or an afterword.